


Life After Death

by Pandoras_loss



Series: The Eve Gilbert Series [2]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-05-20 09:30:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 75
Words: 291,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14892050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandoras_loss/pseuds/Pandoras_loss
Summary: Eve Gilbert tries to find her place in the world, and it is not an easy task.  How do you go from being a metaphorical ghost to one of the living?  It helps that Damon is by her side, but she comes from a place in the shadows, and Elena, her sister, lives in the light.  Will the two ever see eye to eye?Takes place during season 3 of the show.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, I do not own the rights or credit for creating The Vampire Diaries or the characters from the book/show, including: Elena Gilbert, Damon Salvatore, Stefan Salvatore, Bonnie Bennet, Caroline Forbes, Tyler Lockwood, Isobel Flemming, Katherine Pierce, and John Gilbert, to name a few.
> 
> Original characters created by me: Eve Gilbert
> 
> I'd recommend reading the first book in the series, Are We Friends? first.

"Not that one. This one, and I want it to look exactly like this when it's done." I looked at the picture Caroline was showing the hairstylist. It was shoulder length, would have some longer layers that would frame my face, like bangs, and it was messy. That meant I didn't have to spend time styling it, right? Like I'd just be able to get out of the shower, dry it if I felt like it, and go, because the whole point of it was for it to look messy? Or would it take work to make it look like that? I didn't mind drying it if that's all it took, but if it took more than that, I didn't know if I wanted the hassle. My hair wasn't naturally flat, the way Elena often wore hers, nor was it curly the way that Katherine kept hers. It took work to make it look like either. It was mostly straight, but there were some soft waves to it. I didn't mind the length of Caroline's choice. I'd like my hair to be shorter, but I wasn't sold on faux-messy if it was going to take a lot of work.

I looked at Caroline through the mirror. "Are you sure about this? It's not just going to frizz out after I get it home and have to take care of it myself, is it?"

She rolled her eyes. "No, it's not going to look frizzy." Glaring at the hairstylist, she added, "As long as she does it the way she's supposed to do it, it should look good whether you put much effort into it or not." While I pondered whether it was a good idea to give the woman with the scissors any kind of attitude, Caroline looked at me and said, "There will be some minor maintenance, but I'll show you what to do, and it will be super easy. I promise." She looked at the book of colored hair samples and pointed at the purple before saying, "That one for the highlights, but I only want you to give her a few . . . just enough to add a splash of color." While the coloring assistant left to mix up the hair dye, Caroline glanced at me. "You're okay with the color?"

I wasn't opposed to it. "Well, I did tell you that you could do this however you wanted. If it looks terrible, I have nobody to blame but myself." 

She'd wanted to do something for my birthday, and I'd told her that if she wanted to get me something, she could help me not look like Elena and Katherine. It was safer if I didn't, and I was tired of being mistaken for both. Smiling, Caroline said, "It'll look great, and you'll have me to thank."

Looking nonchalantly at the magazine in my hands, I muttered, "And I will give credit where it's due if it's warranted."

"Why can't you just be nice?"

I dropped the magazine and looked at her. "I will . . . I'm waiting to see how it turns out. Some of the clothes you thought looked good on hangers - "

"Did look good on you. You just didn't like them, because you thought they were uncomfortable."

Picking my magazine back up, I said, "I'll have to take your word for it."

"Well you should . . . all things hair and clothes, you can run by me, and I will tell you if they work or not." 

Fair point. "That is one of the things I like most about you Caroline. You're not afraid to hold back what you're thinking."

Examining her fingernails, she responded, "There's no need to insult me," and I threw her a look in the mirror.

"A. It was a compliment, and I meant it as one. B. What's really on your mind? You get overly sensitive when I'm not the problem."

Focusing harder on her nails she said, "I think you were right."

"About what?"

She bit her bottom lip, while she thought about whether or not she should tell me and finally said, "I think I like Tyler." Her eyes flicked up towards me, like she was expecting me to make fun of her. I merely smirked before sitting further back into my chair, and she said, "Shut up."

"What? You like him. I'm betting that he still likes you. What's the problem?"

"Well, for one, Matt already hates me, and - "

I waved that off. "So what? Matt's boring."

"Eve!"

"Well, he is."

"You don't even know him."

Flicking the pages to another article I thought looked interesting, I said, "I know he's got a massive chip on his shoulder when it comes to just about everything, and you shouldn't put your happiness on hold for him." 

When she didn't immediately respond, I glanced at her, and she quietly said, "And I'm not so sure Tyler is interested anymore."

I shrugged a shoulder. "You could always show up outside his bedroom window with a boom box playing _In Your Eyes_."

She didn't like that idea. "I'm not going to go crazy-stalker girl on him."

I glanced at my magazine again. "Yeah, and maybe that's too close to you serenading Matt on stage, but you should do something, a big gesture of some kind. You're a modern woman of the times. Why do you have wait around for him?"

She smiled. "You think so?"

"Maybe. What's the absolute worst thing that could happen? He rejects you and is an ass about it, you feel stupid, so you kill him in front of a bunch of people, and the world knows your secret, so you get staked. As long as that doesn't happen, you'll live, and you'll find someone else, but if you try, you could also get what you want."

The colorist came back, and Caroline eyed her, while saying, "So, you think I should make a big gesture?"

"A spontaneous one that won't embarrass him and that makes you look confident."

She rolled her eyes. "You're no help."

What'd she expect? My only experience with this kind of thing came from movies. "Or you could just talk to him, but that's boring." Caroline kept throwing out ideas, while the colorist did her thing, but the whole time she kept an eagle eye on the woman. If she was that worried about it, she should've just compelled her not to make any mistakes. I suspected that if she hadn't, she might with the woman who was going to cut my hair. She was just that kind of a perfectionist, particularly when it came to style, and with the added pressure of it being her birthday present for me, I guess she wanted it to be right. 

Later, while the stylist got started on cutting, I admired the highlights in the mirror. There were only a 4 or 5 strands a quarter-inch wide that were different, and they were a rich violet, so not very red and not too blue. They blended and still popped against the normal chocolate, but they weren't overpowering . . . just a splash of color the way Caroline had said she wanted. "Do you like it?"

I smiled. "Yeah, I think I do." I wouldn't be confused for either Katherine or Elena. 

"So, are you getting excited about school?"

It took me right out of my good humor. I only had a month to decide. Glancing briefly at Caroline in mirror, I picked up my magazine off the counter. "I'm not sure I'm even going." The idea of attending high school made me feel dread like no vampire hunt had, and that was without thinking about what it'd be like going to school with my sister. People would expect us to be sisterly when the truth was, that the first time either of us had spoken to one another had been at Dad's funeral, and since then . . . well, since then, we were only in close proximity when finding Stefan was being discussed as a group, and there was a lot of eye rolling, sighing in contempt, and snide comments muttered so the other could hear, but not directly said to the target, and it wasn't all just her or me. It was both of us. 

Our meetings were stressful for everyone involved. After the first couple, the people around us kept us apart. Being in class with her? Well, that wouldn't be much fun, especially since this was 'her' school, not mine. I wasn't sure I'd get much done in the learning department. It seemed like a waste of time. I'd never needed to go to school, and I still had the syllabus that my Mom had planned out if I should make it to my senior year. I could do that if I wanted to be educated, and I did, because nobody takes a dullard seriously.

"Come on, Eve. I know at least part of you wants to go, or you wouldn't have taken that test to determine what your grade should be."

Oh no. She was starting to whine. "You mean the test that said I could graduate now if I wanted?"

"Yeah, if you don't want to go to college, but you still have requirements you need if you - "

"College? I can't afford that, and no college is going to accept - " pausing to censor myself, I tried, "what I've been doing with my free time."

She rolled her eyes. "You have no idea how lucky you are to have a hard-knock life story that you can use in your essays. Colleges love those . . . and if you try out for the cheerleading squad - "

"The what?" I stared at her blankly. This was the first I was hearing about that.

"The cheerleading squad. I think you should try out, and - " 

I started laughing, and the woman cutting my hair put her hands on my head to hold me in place. "You're serious?"

Getting frustrated, Caroline yelled, "Yes! I think it might be good for you, and you're coordinated and fit. You wouldn't be terrible at it, and I love those girls, but I want someone that knows the real me to be on the squad with me."

"To keep an eye on you?" I thought she'd gotten enough control over her urges, and it wouldn't be a problem.

"No, to be my friend."

Now I'd gone and hurt her feelings, and I felt the need to apologize. "Caroline - "

"Forget I said anything. It's just that cheerleading is really important to me, and I've always felt like I belonged on the squad. I'm the freaking captain for goodness sake, but now . . . it's just going to be different." Throwing a sad look in my direction she added, "And I thought since Elena and Bonnie weren't up to doing it anymore, then you wouldn't have to worry about running into them, and it'd be something we could do together."

I watched her and slumped back in my seat, much to the frustration of the woman trying to cut my hair. "You're good . . . Faking like you're all sad and using Elena and Bonnie not being up for it as a way to try and get me to do it."

She smirked before mocking me. "Well, it was the truth, so even if I am manipulating you, it doesn't make what I said any less true."

I sighed. "Caroline, I'm not - "

"You are. You just haven't agreed to it yet, but I'll convince you."

"Yeah, well, I don't foresee that happening, and if what you want is quality time with me, then I thought you wanted to start a band. That should be enough, shouldn't it?" She wanted to be the lead singer and for me to play the keyboard/guitar after Damon brought it up to her. It was like I had the two of them trying to push me out of the nest, but all that was going to happen was that I was going to fall flat on my face, break a wing, and most likely get eaten by a cat.

Bulldozing her way right through what I'd said, she countered with, "And I am looking forward to that, but I was talking to my Mom about how I was concerned you were going to become a social pariah, and she said maybe you should give cheerleading a chance. I think she was right. You can get by with being a little mean the way I get by with being a little bossy because of the status being a cheerleader provides." 

The woman cutting my hair snorted, and I inhaled deeply before trying to derail Caroline's train of thought. "A little bossy?"

She didn't take the bait. "You're not just a little mean either. The point is that you'll have a group of built-in friends, and you won't have to worry about spending all your time dodging your sister."

I muttered, "Except when she's with you," and Caroline ignored it.

"Oh yeah, that reminds me. What do you think about her kissing Damon?"

My eyebrows rose in surprise. "I guess she's moving on from Stefan faster than I thought."

Sitting forward to gossip, Caroline said, "See, that's the thing. She's not, and she's pretending like it was nothing, because he was . . . really sick."

Really sick? Did she mean when he was dying after he got bitten by Tyler? "You mean - " She nodded to keep me from saying it. "That was ages ago . . . did she even know Stefan was gone then?"

"Wait, you didn't know?"

"Nope."

"I would've thought he'd tell you." 

I would have too considering he always used to go to me when he wanted advice about her. Maybe that'd changed since she and I had met, and it hadn't gone very well. "I told him that I don't want him trying to convert me to Team Elena . . . I don't want him being caught in the middle. If she wants to make amends, she can do it herself."

Holding her breath for a few moments, Caroline shook her head. "Yeah, I don't see that being on the horizon any time soon." That's what I thought. I rolled my eyes, and she said, "Maybe you could try apologizing?" 

"For what?"

"Well, you weren't exactly nice with what you said about her parents."

"She's the one that interrupted my Dad's funeral and said it was stupid even though I put all that work into making sure it was perfect. And she walked out in the middle of my eulogy."

Caroline nodded sympathetically. "I know, but you did kind of say that she ruined your life and that he wasn't her Dad."

"He was her biological father, but she only ever knew him as her Uncle until recently, and when Mom died, I heard her tell him that he screwed everything up, but since he was the only parent she had left, maybe she could learn not to hate him. That was only a few days before he died. She didn't change her mind on him that much in a few days." Caroline opened her mouth, but I quickly cut her off by adding, "And let me ask you this . . . with as sensitive as she is about the subject of her parents, how would she have reacted to someone saying their funeral was stupid or slapping her in the face when she was burying them?" She didn't answer, so I did it for her. "Nobody would've ever thought of doing something like that to her, so you can't imagine it, but that's what she did to me, and for some reason, I'm supposed to just get over it and apologize to her. Well, I'm just not that big of a person." I looked away from Caroline and sighed. "Look, I know you're just trying to help - "

"No, I shouldn't have said anything. It's just hard, you know? I don't want to be in the middle."

"Well, I don't want that for anyone either . . . How about this? If she apologizes for all the rest, I'll apologize for saying she ruined my life. It's the only thing I said that I didn't mean. I don't blame her for what happened to my parents."

"You may not blame her for that, but I think maybe you do blame her for what your parents did to you in order to make sure she had the best life possible." Maybe I did. I didn't respond, and Caroline smiled, "Which is just one more reason to take your life by the horns and try out for cheerleading." 

I sent her a little glare. "And how do you think that - "

"You were raised like a hermit, but you're not one anymore. You need to get out more, and this is the perfect way of doing that."

I started to shake my head, and the hairstylist firmly put my head back into position. Huffing, I said, "I'll have you know, I get out almost every night."

Waving that off, Caroline sat back in her chair. "What, your little top secret game that you play with Damon?"

"Yep."

"Why can't anybody know?"

"By anybody you mean - "

"Me."

"I actually think you'd have fun, but if you told anyone - "

Sitting up again, she cut me off. "Is it bad?"

"I guess it depends on who you ask."

"But I'd have fun?"

"Yeah, I think maybe you would." She bit her bottom lip in thought before saying, "Would you bring me along if I promise not to tell anyone?"

She wasn't making me suspicious at all. "Let me guess, it's the topic of conversation when Stefan isn't being discussed. If you're just going to report back to - "

"I promise I won't tell them. I know you're not a bad influence on him, and if it's anywhere close to as much fun as training can be, then I want in on it." 

We'd taken a break from it for a while after her ordeal with the werewolves, but she'd come to me wanting to start self-defense training again in the summer after Klaus left town. And if she knew it was training adjacent, then she had to know it had something to do with Damon getting to use his vampire skills, which meant she enjoyed being able to let loose and just be what she was for a little while. Maybe she didn't want the others to know that. "Okay. If we go out tonight - "

"I can't tonight."

"Okay, well then when your schedule is free, let me know, and you can come with us if it's what you want."

She smiled, quite pleased with herself and sat back again before saying, "You know another reason I think it'd be more fun to have you on the squad with me? You're fearless and with my strength, I have some new stunts I want to try. I think we could take State."

If I could shake my head I would. Instead, I resorted to giving her an annoyed look. "You're not going to let this go, are you?"

"Nope, and I have a month to convince you. I'm just getting started."


	2. Going to Graceland

It was never, 'Hi.' It was never, 'How's it going?' It was almost always, 'Guess what I found?' or as was the case in this instance, "Where are you?" Damon and phone etiquette when he was the one calling weren't exactly synonymous with one another.

"I'm having my birthday lunch with Caroline and Tyler."

"At the Grill?"

"Yep."

"What would you say to getting out of this town for a while?"

I smiled and started to pull some money out to pay my fair share until Caroline slapped my arm and indicated I should put it away, because she wanted to pay. Giving her a death glare, I answered, "I'd say that's the best birthday present ever . . . Wait, you're not going to try and talk me into being a cheerleader too, are you?" 

Tyler laughed at the notion and nudged Caroline to get her to fill him in on what I meant by that, while Damon answered, "Nope. We have a solid lead."

Getting up, I said, "Even better," before he said he was almost there, and we both hung up. 

I walked behind Caroline's chair, and leaned over her from the back. Her flinch was noticeable, and it made me frown. "Relax. I'm not going to break your neck in front of all these people."

Putting up a bit of a struggle as I wrapped my arms around her, she awkwardly said, "What are you . . . are you hugging me?"

"Yep . . . I just wanted to say that even though you've annoyed me as much as I can tolerate for one day, thanks. I like the new hair. You did a great job."

"Aww." She patted my forearm before I let her go. Looking at Tyler, she almost gleefully said, "See, I said she wasn't an evil twin."

Putting his hands up, Tyler replied, "Hey, I never said she was."

"Yeah, but now you can back me up when I say it."

I saw Damon's car pull up and gave Tyler's arm a playful shove, while saying goodbye, and bounded to the car. Getting in, I asked, "Where are we going this time?" and Damon drove away from the curb saying, "Memphis," before glancing in my direction and then doing a double take. "What'd you do to you're hair?"

I smiled. "It was Caroline's present to me." 

His brow furrowed before he put his eyes back on the road and shook his head. "Well, it's different."

"Exactly. Now, I don't look like either one of them anymore, and I don't care what you think. I like it." 

He rolled his eyes. "Then I guess you're fine with giving up?"

"Giving up?"

"Yeah, Katherine and your sister get to keep their identity, but you're the one who has to change."

I frowned before directing my attention out the passenger-side window. I hadn't thought of that. "Or maybe I can look however I want now, and this is what I want . . . and it's safer. If I'm shot or attacked now, it'll be because they're going for me and not someone else." He didn't appear to be in the best of moods, so before he could find another way to insult me, I said, "So, what's the lead in Memphis?" He reached behind his seat and pulled out a stack of papers. Going through them, I muttered, "So, they're not done with Pensacola?"

"What?"

"Don't you remember? That guy we went to check out in Florida had family in Memphis. That's either some coincidence, or there's something to it. There is an organized pattern to what they're doing . . . well, what Klaus is doing. The more places they go, and the more bodies they leave behind, the clearer the pattern gets . . . Do you think that's why Stefan is - "

"No. He's not dropping bodies, like breadcrumbs. He doesn't want to be found. He just can't help himself."

"So, he's definitely - "

"I don't know if he's gone full-blown ripper yet, but he is in way too deep to control it."

I put the papers down in my lap and looked at Damon. "Can you bring him back?"

"Yeah, but if he's flipped that switch . . . " He sighed before saying, "Lexi is the only one that could ever bring him back from that."

"Lexi?"

"His best friend."

Ah, Stefan's file called her Alexia. "Do you know where she is?"

"I killed her."

"Oh." 

His eyes flicked in my direction, and he felt the need to explain. "When I first got to town, I wasn't all that discreet, and the Council was looking for a vampire. She came to town for Stefan's birthday, and I gave them a vampire."

Well, if that was his idea of a birthday present, I guess it was a good thing I didn't have any best friends other than him. "What does it take to switch it back?"

He thought about it for a while. "There's no set formula. It just happens. It can be anything that makes you feel. Anger's a pretty good one."

"Well then you are the man for the job." I smirked at the look he gave me, and then said, "Could Elena get through to him?"

He waited a few seconds before saying, "She could be used to make him flip it, like if he really believed she was going to die, and he felt that fear, then that would work . . . but he's just as likely to be the one that kills her, and it wouldn't flip until after he realizes what he's done." Looking at me he added, "But don't go getting any ideas about killing her to bring him back."

I laid my head against the passenger-side window and closed my eyes. "You're in a bad mood. Wake me up when we get there."

"Eve."

It sounded like a warning, like he expected me to promise not to kill Elena. Without opening my eyes, I grumbled, "I can't believe you think so little of me. I may not like her, but I'm not sororicidal. It would go against everything I was raised to be, and it would be a waste of Dad's life if I was so flippant with hers. If she ever needs protection from anyone, I'll be there if it's required and then leave without talking to her . . . so no. I'm not going to kill her or attempt to kill her to make your brother flip his humanity back on." A thought occurred to me, and I opened my eyes to look at him. "It's not something you were considering and just projecting onto me, is it?"

He looked offended. "I would never - "

"Good. Then we're on the same page." I hesitated before saying, "It's more than just a lead, isn't it? You think they might still be there. It's why you're so . . . tense."

Resting his elbow on the door and his head in his hand, he answered, "I just don't know what we're going to find when we get there."

Mm. He'd said the same thing when we went to Florida, but he hadn't been this moody then. It'd been more of a holiday, because I'd never been to Florida, and we were days behind when they'd been there. "You don't have to worry about me." He glanced in my direction, and I tried to explain. "I mean, Stefan is the priority, and his is your brother, so however you want to play this is what I'll do." I wasn't going to do anything to jeopardize Stefan just to get at Klaus.

He relaxed, but still snarked, "Does that mean I can turn around and take you back?"

"You can if you want, but you're the one that called me . . . and you should ask the Sheriff to get the address of where that Pensacola guy's family lived in Memphis, so we know where we're going when we get there. Maybe we can head them off." 

I went back to closing my eyes, heard him texting, and then a few minutes later, he asked, "So, have you ever been to Memphis?" I shook my head. "Do you want to check out Graceland, while we're there?" 

That was better. I opened one eye to look at him, and the corner of my mouth turned up into a small smile. "Bit tacky for you, isn't it?"

"You can say that after we've gone, not before. It's all about opening you up to new experiences."

I drily responded, "By going to Graceland."

"That's right."

"And Pensacola."

"You bet." He chuckled before looking at me and saying, "I promise when this is all over, I will take you somewhere good."

"Like?"

"Wherever you want to go."

"Then I want to go to Gabon to see the gorillas."

He did another double take of me before he snorted. "Figures."

"What?"

"Couldn't be somewhere simple, like Paris or Rome. No, you want to go trekking through the jungle to see some gorillas."

"And?"

"And - " he bit his bottom lip before looking at me again with a more considered face. "It'd be a first for me too. Yeah, I think we could do that if you want." 

"You won't eat the gorillas will you?"

He rolled his eyes. "No. You won't kill any poachers will you?"

Good question. "It presents an interesting conundrum. They are humans, and they hunt to survive or for sport, but vampires kill to survive and for sport, and I kill them to protect people who need it. Why would it be any different if gorillas were the ones who needed protection?"

He opened his mouth to give an immediate answer and then thought better of it before coming out with, "You're right. You should give up vampire hunting." Well, that's not what I'd expected, because that isn't what I'd said. I sat up to look at him, and he said, "It is a slippery slope you're on, and if you continue going the way you are, it won't be long until you start thinking like that all the time."

"You don't mean that." 

He concentrated on his wording. "I might . . . if it's better for you, then yeah, I think you should give it up, but it's all you've ever known, and I don't know if you could . . . maybe just stick with the 'no killing humans' policy?" He glanced in my direction, like he wanted to see if that was the right answer, and I shrugged, because I didn't know.

"But I can beat them up, right?"

He grinned. "Any humans or just poachers?"

"Whoever needs it."

He laughed again. "Who are you planning on fighting?"

"Nobody . . . just curious."

"Well, for starters stay away from the humans with badges."

I looked away from him in annoyance. "Why? You've gotten a lot of good mileage out of that one. I have to be on the Council, which is as boring as you said it was, and none of them listen to me anyway. And I have to go to school even though my Mom did such a good job teaching me, I don't really need to go . . . and now, Caroline won't leave me alone about joining her stupid cheerleading squad."

Lifting his finger, he contradicted me. "Actually, two of those weren't me . . . and now I think I understand why you want to know if you can fight with other people."

I sat back in a huff. "I'm not trying out for her squad."

He paused and then shook his head. "Yeah, I've got nothing for that one. You're not the type . . . although I wouldn't mind going to games to see how many cheerleaders you put in the hospital by the end. I don't think she's really thought this through."

"It was her Mom's idea."

"Liz?"

"Yep . . . I guess Caroline thinks I'm going to be a social pariah if I go to school, and her Mom said I should try out for cheerleading, so I could make friends."

"Why would she think you're going to be an outcast?" 

He seemed concerned, so focusing out the side window, I said, "It's just Caroline being Caroline. I'll know her, and I'll know Tyler. For me, that's fine. For her, that'd be awful."

"And that's all it is?"

I shrugged without looking at him. "I may not even go. I don't know if I'm cut out for - "

"You deserve to have the normal teenage experience." 

I'm sure he meant that as a good thing, because to him, being human was a time in his life that he missed, but for me, trudging through halls full of students was going to be torture. Giving him a sad smile, I said, "Lets just say that for the first time, I wish I'd had it when you did." 

He smiled whimsically and then said, "Yeah, things were a lot different then. The entire school fit in one room, and it was still probably smaller than one of your classes is going to be. It would've suited you a lot better . . . except that mouth of yours would've gotten you into a lot more trouble. Teachers believed in corporal punishment back then . . . and you would've hated the corsets and dresses ladies were expected to wear." 

He had a point. Maybe I wasn't meant to go to school in any time period. "You're sure I - "

"Just try it. Besides, I thought graduating was on your bucket list. This is kind of the only way to officially do that."

He was on fire with making sense today. I still felt the need to say, "I would've been happy finishing my Mom's syllabus and simply saying, 'I graduated.'" 

He gave me a look that said he didn't believe that for a second. "And then what? The two of us stand around in your room with a cupcake that says, 'Good job?'" 

I tried not to smile. "With little cardboard party hats and party horns? Yeah. That."

One of his eyebrows rose as he said, "I think we could do better than that."

"I guess we'll find out."

"So you'll do it?"

I sighed. I couldn't go to school for him or Caroline or anyone else. If I was going to do this, then I had to do it for myself, and what exactly was it that I wanted? I didn't know. When I was little, I did want to go to a normal school, but now was a different story. It would be a challenge, but I wasn't one to not do something, because it was difficult.


	3. Tracking a Serial Killer

My head tilted to the side, while I examined the woman's dead eyes. "Milky eyes." Poking her in a couple of places, I said, "Full rigor mortis and cold to the touch . . . They were here over 8 hours ago, but it hasn't been a full day."

I looked over my shoulder at Damon, and he muttered, "I knock this one's head off, and you totally ignore it?" 

I shrugged. "They're dead. Knocking her head off isn't going to change that, and when you're tracking, you have to know approximate times of death, so you can know how close you are to your prey . . . I mean vampire."

"Be honest. You don't do this to save people. You do it for the kill."

I shook my head as I stood. "It's not the kill."

Stopping me from leaving by gently grabbing my forearm, Damon said, "It's the hunt?"

"That's what makes it fun, but I have fun with you, so I could have fun doing something else."

"I don't get it."

"It's my responsibility to keep that - " I pointed to the headless woman. "from happening to anyone else. But I don't feel bad about the ones who die, because I didn't kill them, so it's not my fault it happened. What I can do is use them to find what I'm tracking rather than letting them go to waste."

Damon looked at the two women again in semi-fascination before saying, "Trust me. Stefan didn't let any of them go to waste."

"Not their blood. I meant their lives." 

"And you don't do it to save someone that's being attacked?"

"99% of victims I find are already dead."

"I am struggling to understand why this is your responsibility."

"Because I can do something about it."

"That doesn't mean that it has to be you that does it though."

How could I explain this? "Doctors have a responsibility to save people who are sick. Captains have a responsibility to stay on a sinking boat until everyone else is off. This is my responsibility."

He still seemed perplexed. "Killing vampires?"

"It's where I fit . . . not good or bad, but somewhere in the middle."

He shook his head. "You're more than that."

Turning away from him, I muttered, "I'm really not," and paused. I had a conscience. It's just that my lines on the difference between right and wrong were a little blurry, but they had to be to do what I did, and I knew he kept a close eye on it. Why, I wasn't sure, but I think he didn't want me to turn into a monster, because it was a tricky balancing act on the edge of a razor. Most vampire hunters were just as bad as the things they hunted . . . maybe a little like the way I was heading when I first met him, what with how flippant I'd been with that woman's life at the farmhouse. From what I understood, vampire hunters were vicious and deadly to anyone they came across, and that included innocent people if it meant getting their true target. 

The difference between vampire hunters and vampires was that rather than flipping a switch, they were able to do what they did because they were fueled by pure hatred. That probably made them even more dangerous than vampires, because hate was such a powerful emotion, and it's not something they could simply shut off, so their humanity could be returned to them, the way a vampire could with the touch of a button. "If I don't feel anything about the victims, it means I don't hate the things that do this to them . . . It may make me calloused, but I'm not blinded by rage or hate."

Stepping up behind me, he said, "And what happened after Rose?"

I knew he'd been more worried about that than he'd ever said. That's the real reason he decided every now and then that we needed to do something 'normal.' Sighing, I answered, "I'm not perfect. I cared about what happened to her, but it wasn't hate that fueled me to do what I did. It was a . . . I don't know. Anger at the injustice of it all? Jules lost her temper over nothing, went for you, and got Rose. It wasn't your fault or Rose's, but Rose and her victim at the school paid the price, and to achieve that, Jules had to intentionally let herself roam free that night knowing what could happen if she did. She killed even more people that were camping as a result . . . It was a lot of needless death and destruction over nothing, and I couldn't let that go. Her pack wasn't any better. I didn't hate them. I just couldn't let a war break out, and if there's only one side, there can't be a war. If there's no war, there's no collateral damage."

"And they were torturing Caroline." I shrugged, and he said, "You told me one time that you hated needless death and torture . . . I said I didn't care and walked away." I didn't particularly remember that, but I nodded anyway, because that sounded about right. "So, it was a perfect storm for you."

"Yeah, it wasn't a normal occurrence." I briefly smiled. "I'm not a sociopath, psychopath, or whatever it is you've decided to think I might be today."

"You've been fine all summer. It's just that with them being so close - "

"I told you I'm going to play this the way you want. I'm not going to kill your brother."

I looked behind me when he pointed back at the bodies and said, "That doesn't look like needless death to you?"

It looked like needless suffering to me, not necessarily needless death. I didn't know how to explain how I defined the difference. Maybe Stefan was just hungry, and he went overboard, or Klaus had some greater purpose for their deaths. Either way there may have been more need behind it than I knew . . . or maybe I was just making excuses, because I wasn't going to kill Damon's brother even though he probably deserved it. "That looks to me like your brother has some serious issues. I actually find it more disturbing to see them sitting there like prim and proper dolls than I would've found it if we walked in here, and they were in pieces scattered all over the house." I glanced at Damon and added, "Seriously strong serial killer vibes coming from that one. I think I'll call him 'The Doll Maker.'"

He tried not to smile. "You know he does it because he feels remorse, right?"

One of my eyebrows rose in amusement. "Sure. I get it. He wishes they weren't dead, so he makes it look like they're not . . . It's still disturbing, and I now dub him The Doll Maker."

"You can't call him that to his face."

"Why, because it'll hurt his feelings? I think that's the least of his problems."

Rolling his eyes, Damon turned me and pushed me towards the door. "Come on, we need to get some things to burn this place to the ground."

"Well, look at you, cleaning up after your brother for a change."

"Shut up."

Looking over my shoulder at him, I asked "Can I light the match?"

"What the birthday girl wants, the birthday girl gets." 

I smirked. "Plus 2 tickets to Graceland."


	4. Surprise!

We pulled up to the boarding house, and my hand went to the door handle out of habit even though it froze there, while I took in the sight before me. There were young people hanging out all over the lawn . . . some were hanging out of actual windows. There were red plastic cups littering the place. Loud music was blaring inside. "What fresh hell is this?"

Damon laughed. "Caroline wanted to throw you a surprise party."

I looked at him in confusion. "Me?" 

Sighing as he looked at the house, he said, "It's for you and Elena. Elena knew. You didn't, hence the surprise."

I felt betrayed. "You were in on it?"

"I knew about it."

"That's why you wanted to go to freaking Graceland? You wanted us to get here when things were in full swing, so I couldn't do anything to sabotage it."

He gave me one of his more annoying smirks. "And isn't it great that I know you well enough to know that's exactly what you'd do if you did know about it."

I watched in disgust as a kid threw up in some bushes. Suddenly my eyes widened as I opened my door. "My piano!" There could be kids puking in that at this very moment. I didn't get more than a few steps before Damon was standing in front of me.

"Caroline knows that room and yours are both off limits."

Looking past him at the crowd of drunken high school students, I flicked my hand in their direction before whining, "And you think they care about boundaries right now?"

Doing a terrible job at trying not to laugh, Damon put his hands on my shoulders and said, "Eve, it's just a party. You're going to be going to school with all these people in a month anyway. You might as well get used to them now."

I looked at them in horror and shook my head. "I'm seriously reconsidering that decision."

"Nah, you promised you would. You have to go through with it now." Turning me towards the side of the house, he said, "So, here's what we're going to do. You are going to sneak into your room. It's half your party, which means that if you want to stay in there hiding all night you can, but when Caroline inevitably kicks you out, come find me. I am going to go in the front to start chaperoning." 

Leaning back into his chest, so I could look up at him, I whispered, "You're going to check on my piano, aren't you?"

"That's the first place I'm going."

"And if anyone - "

"They're dead." 

I breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. "Okay . . . You're not really going to kill - "

"No."

With a final nod, I left him and made my way around the back, so I could climb in through my bedroom window. I wasn't entirely sure if he'd meant that when he told me to sneak into my room, or if he'd thought I'd go through the back door, but using the window prevented me from being seen by anyone. I was relieved to find that when my feet hit the floor, I was alone. It didn't seem like anything was out of place, and I searched high and low to make sure it wasn't. The sounds of the party were much louder from in here. It was one thing going to a club with Damon to play our game. It was an entirely different experience having that loud, obnoxious vibe brought into a place where I normally felt calm and could decompress. It felt a little like I was in a combat zone, and my room was my safe house, but an attack could come through the door at any moment to completely derail that.

Caroline would come looking for me when she saw Damon. I looked down at my boots. There was probably blood on the soles of them, so I sat on my bed to remove them and reached down for my black Converse. Those should be fine . . . so should the jeans. I didn't see any blood on them. I may have gotten blood on my shirt, because that house had been covered in it, so I changed out of my t-shirt, put on a black long-sleeve v-neck, and threw on my fitted, and altered to be fully-loaded, olive green army jacket before looking at my door. If this was a combat zone, that jacket was what made me feel safe. 

It may not have seemed like it, but I'd spent a good 30 minutes making sure none of my things had been touched, pacing and thinking about what I was going to do, and then changing my clothes. Now the moment of truth was upon me. Did I hide in here like a coward? Did I wait for Caroline to come get me and seem like a prima donna that I wasn't, simply because I was too uncomfortable to make an appearance? Did I go out there by myself, make an appearance, correct people when they called me Elena, and then meet Damon at the other end of the gauntlet? The last one is the option that would cause me the greatest amount of discomfort, but it's the one I had to do. 

Taking a deep breath, I pulled the door open to find Caroline standing there with her arm raised, like she was about to knock. She grinned and then looked down at my clothes. "What are you wearing?"

"Whatever it takes to get me through this in one piece."

"Oh no, no, no. You're supposed to wear something pretty and - "

"Caroline please?" 

It was a heartfelt plea, and maybe that's why when she looked back up at me, she relaxed before sighing. "Okay. I thought for sure you were going to stake me just for making you come out of your room, so I guess it's better than that." 

She gave me an attempt at a compassionate smile, and I said, "And there's no blood on it."

Looking more confident in her decision to let me wear what I wanted, she stood a little taller and responded happily, "Well, that's a small miracle in and of itself." Waiting for me to step out of the room, so she could walk next to me down the hall, she whispered, "So, you found something?"

"We did."

"You'll tell me all about it later?"

"Definitely." Klaus was hunting werewolves based on what we found under that house, and to my mind, that meant that he thought they were the key to making his hybrids. I mean, it made sense. He was technically born a werewolf first and then became a vampire, which is what made him a hybrid, so to make his hybrids, he probably needed to start with werewolves too. Luckily werewolves were hard to find, so we weren't too late to stop him, but we were running out of time, because he was getting close.

Caroline grinned and said, "Excellent," before quickly adding, "I have to talk to this girl . . . you go on ahead. Work the room, like you own it. You live here, so act like it's where you belong. Don't hide," and then she was gone, talking to some girl that we'd passed. The numbers of people grew, the further I got down the hall. It may be where I lived, but it didn't seem like the same place at all. I definitely felt like hiding, and the best way to do that was to get lost in the crowd. It's what I did in the clubs, and nobody here was really paying attention to anyone they weren't talking to unless I bumped into them, and then they looked at me and said, "Happy Birthday, Elena."

I'd mumble, "It's Eve," and keep going, more careful not to disturb anyone else that was in my path until I made my way out onto the back patio and managed to get enough air to breathe. Resting my hands on the stonework, I focused on taking slow steadying breaths. "Hey, you look like you could use one of these." 

I looked to my left and saw Damon. I'd been so focused on keeping upright that I hadn't even known he was there. Taking the glass he offered me, I muttered, "Yeah, I think I've told at least 5 people that I'm Eve so far . . . Great party," and he raised his glass in a toast.

"To first steps."

I clinked my glass against his and took a small sip before looking out at the drunk kids on the back lawn. "Damon, what am I going to do? It's different when we're playing one of our games in a club because nobody knows anyone else, and they don't care who anyone else is. I could get through this if I went in there and pretended to be Elena, but - " 

He reached up to touch my hair and said, "You kind of made sure you couldn't." I looked at him, and he said, "And I think I like it better this way."

"You said - "

"Yeah, but if it means you can't hide behind being Elena anymore, then I'm all for it." Moving so he could sit closer to me, he started to say, "Eve - "

But then someone came up on my left, demanded, "Drink," and took his glass from his hand. I looked over my shoulder and saw it was Elena. She was too busy complaining to notice me. "Jeremy's smoking again."

I muttered, "Well, addiction is a huge problem. You should get him into rehab fast," and that earned me a glare as she finally realized who I was. 

"He's not an addict!"

It was the first time since she slapped me that she'd spoken directly to me. She finally broke, and it made me want to smile. "Then what's the problem?" From what I understood, he did drugs after his parents died, and then stopped when Damon compelled him to forget Vicki dying. If he was doing drugs again, then he must have a reason, but it wasn't a reason he was apparently sharing with her, and all she could see were the drugs, not the real problem. Standing up to look at her, I said, "I could talk to him . . . cousin to cousin. Maybe not all is well with your revenant brother, and he needs - " 

I barely got my eyes closed in time to keep them from getting splashed with alcohol as she threw Damon's drink in my face. While I wiped it off with my sleeve, she heatedly told me, "Stay away from my brother," before storming back into the party. Well, that hadn't gone well.

When I glanced at Damon, he said, "Why does everything you say come out sounding like a threat?"

I sighed before leaning back on the stone wall next to him. "It wasn't a threat."

"I know that, and I know what you meant. Maybe you're right. Maybe he did come back a little wrong, and he's not telling anyone, but you called him a revenant, and - "

I cut him off while looking at him over my shoulder. "You know she might think me calling him a revenant was threatening if somebody told her what I said after I found out he died and came back." He'd been the only one there other than me.

"I am wounded that you think I would betray your trust in such a fashion." 

Maybe it'd been my body language. Maybe she just didn't like me calling her brother a zombie or offering to talk to him, in general, if it meant he might open up with me when he wasn't with her. "Okay."

"You believe me just like that?"

How long had we known each other now, and he was still surprised whenever I went with something he said. "When you revert back to 1860s Damon, and it's a genuine slip of the tongue, I know you're being honest."

His eyes widened. "I never - "

"You so do. Authentic Proper Damon doesn't make much of an appearance, so when he does, I take note, and I've identified a pattern."

Gone were the days when me hitting a little too close to some hidden truth of his meant that he was potentially going to snap and kill someone. Giving me an easy smile, he said, "Well, you, Miss Eve, are missing your party . . . I would be most honored if you allowed me to accompany you to it, so you don't miss anymore."

I rolled my eyes. "You said it that way intentionally."

"And yet I meant it. Perhaps you do not know me as well as you think."

Focusing my attention on the cuffs of my sleeves, I said, "Well, Mr. Salvatore, I wouldn't presume to know everything . . . Just today a little birdie told me something about you to which I had no prior knowledge."

Enjoying the game, he sat forward and asked, "And what, pray tell, might that be?"

I looked at him over my shoulder with my eyebrows raised in expectation. "It would appear that another Miss Gilbert was quite forward with you when you lay dying and yet I heard not a peep about it until today." 

His brow furrowed. "Eve - "

"I'm sorry." He seemed confused by my response, so dropping the pretense of sounding like a lady from the 1860s, I tried to clarify. "If you couldn't tell me something that had to make you feel pretty conflicted with the Doll Maker gone, then I'm sorry. I know my cold war with Elena hasn't been easy on anyone."

He looked like he wasn't sure what to say to that, but then he picked up on the thing I'd wanted him to when I said it. "Stop calling him the Doll Maker."

With a smile, I responded, "I quite like seeing you be a protective big brother. I don't think I will."

"Eve."

"Yes, Damon?"

He tried not to smile, while he said, "Stop trying to pick a fight with me because you don't want to go back in there."

My shoulders dropped. "Is it that obvious?"

"Little bit." Hopping up from his seat, he offered me his arm and said, "Shall we?" I reluctantly took it before looking up at him, and he smiled. "Miss Eve if you would be so kind as to save a dance for me on your card, it would make the night most memorable for me."

I laughed. "Mr. Salvatore, if I may be so bold as to select the music for the rest of the night, then you may have all the dances on my card."

"Why do I feel like if I agree to this, you're going to use it to clear the house? " All I did was grin in response. "All right. I'll show you where they set up the sound desk."


	5. Kiss Off

Damon tried to take away the microphone I'd found, but I hugged it to my chest saying, "Let me do it." 

"You're going to self destruct before you even start school."

"Oh, Damon, haven't you heard? I've already got nicknames. I'll be fine." You could hear the whispers every once in a while when you passed people, or I could anyway, particularly when Caroline made them all sing happy birthday to Elena and I before we cut our cakes. 

He sighed before looking out at the throng of drunk students. "Yeah, I'm starting to think you were holding back a few things from me when you said Caroline thought you were going to be an outcast."

"Well, I knew about the evil twin one. Bizarro Gilbert is new to me." Those were the nicest ones I'd heard.

Plugging the mic back in he said, "Might as well start the year off with a bang." 

Tapping the mic to see if it worked, I cut the music to loud groans from everybody. Looking around I grinned before saying, "As some of you may already know. I'm Elena's sister, Eve Gilbert. I'm looking around, and I don't see my cousin Jeremy anywhere . . . where is he?" I saw a few hands at the back of the room pointing to somebody, and then smiled when I saw him come around the corner into view. "There you are. This song is dedicated to you. Come find me if you ever want to talk. The rest of you . . . since twins have to split everything, the music selection is mine for the rest of the night. You'll probably hate it." Putting on an a flight attendant's voice, and gesturing to the doors, I added, "If you do, please make your way to the nearest exit, and you should be just fine."

I hit the play button and _Kiss Off_ from the Violent Femmes started blaring out over the speakers before Damon leaned down towards my ear and yelled, "That wasn't as bad as I was expecting."

I gave him a devilish grin and said, "We'll see." If Elena was around to hear the lyrics, maybe it'd piss her off. It'd probably piss Jeremy off too even though that wasn't my intention.

_I need someone, a person to talk to_  
_Someone who'd care to love_  
_Could it be you?_  
_Could it be you?_

People were mostly standing around staring, like they didn't know what to do, and Damon took my hand to pull me out from around the desk saying, "If I get all the dances, then I want this one too."

 _The situation gets rough, and I start to panic_  
_It's not enough, it's just a habit_  
_And kid, you're sick_  
_Well, darling, this is it_

When we got out in front of the desk, Damon unexpectedly spun me out away from him and back to his chest as the drums kicked in at the start of the chorus, and I laughed before following his lead when he started the jive. 

_Well, you can all just kiss off into the air_  
_Behind my back, I can see them stare_  
_They'll hurt me bad, but I won't mind_  
_They'll hurt me bad, they do it all the time (yeah, yeah!)_  
_They do it all the time (yeah, yeah!)_  
_They do it all the time (do it all the time!)_  
_They do it all the time (do it all the time!)_  
_They do it all the time_

The thing about Damon is he is a great dancer, and he had this ability to make anyone he was dancing with look good. He did it at clubs when he got drunk and danced with random women, and he had that ability when he danced with me even though he never danced with me the way he danced with those women. Like he'd never do a jive with one of them. I had natural rhythm, and my mom and I used to dance around our house when I was younger, so I could dance a little using what she'd taught me, but he always took it to that next level. 

_I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record!_  
_Oh, yeah? Well, don't get so distressed_  
_Did I happen to mention that I'm impressed?_

He let me bounce around him, while he left his hand up for me to use for twirling during the interlude, since it was essentially un-danceable. I stopped in front of him with a little bounce on the beat at the end, and he grinned, which was my cue to follow his lead again as he started doing his cool take on the twist. By then I didn't care if anyone was watching or dancing or leaving. I was having fun.

_I take one, one, one 'cause you left me_

We got a little lower and kept going lower with each line.

_And two, two, two for my family_  
_And three, three, three for my heartache_  
_And four, four, four for my headaches_  
_And five, five, five for my lonely,_

We started getting a little higher with each line after that.

_And six, six, six for my sorrow_  
_And seven, seven - n,n,n-no tomorrow_  
_And eight, eight, I forget what eight was for_  
_But nine, nine, nine for the lost gods_

And on ten, we raised our arms above our head and started jumping around each other on the word everything.

_Ten, ten, ten, ten for everything, everything, everything, everything_

He pulled me back into his arms for the jive we'd done at the start of the song.

_Well, you can all just kiss off into the air_  
_Behind my back, I can see them stare_  
_They'll hurt me bad, but I won't mind_  
_They'll hurt me bad, they do it all the time (yeah, yeah!)_  
_They do it all the time (yeah, yeah!)_  
_They do it all the time (do it all the time!)_  
_They do it all the time (do it all the time!)_  
_They do it all the time time time time t-time time tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-time tu-time time (do it all the time!)_

We stopped on the final beat, and he let me go with a brief laugh. I looked around. People drunk enough not to care what was playing seemed to be bouncing around even though the song had stopped. There were fewer people, but for the most part, I think everyone was drunk enough to stay. 

_Blitzkreig Bop_ started, and Damon pointed at me from a few feet away in recognition of it before we both started jumping up and down to that song, like we were at an actual gig, and if I ever bounced too far, he pulled me back towards him to make sure he still got his dance. The rest of the night went by in a blur until I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked behind me, and there was Jeremy. "Hey, what did you mean earlier?" Glancing around at everyone else in the room to see if they were listening, he leaned closer and asked, "What do you know about what's happening to me?" Ah ha, so there was something. 

I looked back at Damon with my eyebrows raised, like 'I told you so,' and he rolled his eyes before saying, "Go talk to him, but you owe me a dance for every song you miss." 

Turning to follow Jeremy, I said, "Deal." When we got out the back door, there were fewer people than there had been earlier, so I found a quiet spot in the corner and hopped up on the wall before patting the spot next to me as indication he should sit. He seemed reluctant. "I won't bite. Kind of against the rules for those of us who hunt the things that do bite."

A little smile passed across his face before he inhaled sharply and took a seat next to me. Looking around again to see if anyone could hear us, he leaned his forearms on his knees and quietly said, "What do you know?"

I shrugged. "Well, I know that for you to be sitting here right now, some bad juju had to go down."

"Bonnie wouldn't - "

"Not intentionally, but it is against the natural order of things, and witches who go against the natural order, particularly when it comes to raising the dead, aren't doing something 'good' with their magic. There are always consequences."

"How do you know that?"

"My Mom became an expert on all things occult . . . I picked up a few things along the way."

He smiled again and relaxed. "So, that's why you think I'm a revenant?"

I rolled my eyes. "I did when I first found out . . . and how do you know that?"

"Caroline told Bonnie, and Bonnie told me."

I looked off to the side in annoyance. "Of course it was Caroline. I must've said something while we were training."

He laughed. It wasn't particularly funny, but I guess just about anything would seem funny to him right about now. "I believe the exact words she said you used were, 'I have to be ready in case there's a revenant outbreak in town.'"

Nodding as I remembered that, I said, "And she took me seriously enough to think it was something that Bonnie might need to know about." I sighed. "She's still hit and miss on getting my humor." I looked at him. "I didn't think that you were seriously a zombie by the time I said it, and I don't think that now. I may have briefly thought it would be cool to hunt something new when I first found out, but Damon assured me that it wasn't necessary, and said I couldn't kill you." Looking off into the distance, I added, "I still think they must be out there somewhere though. I will have my day." He laughed again, and I focused on him. "What are you trying to block out with the drugs?"

"I just had one joint, and it was tonight. How did you know - "

"Your sister complained to Damon about it earlier." He rolled his eyes, and I attempted to keep the conversation from derailing again. "Seriously. What is it? Are you seeing things, or hearing - "

"Both."

Huh. That'd been a shot in the dark. He'd died a couple of months ago, so I knew he wasn't smoking weed because of stress from the incident itself, which meant it had to be something else that he wanted to hide from by altering his brain chemistry. "And it's getting more frequent?"

"Yeah . . . does your Mom's research say anything about how to get rid of it?"

"Jeremy, you died."

"Yeah? I've died before and - "

"This is different. You died - no hope of coming back kind of died - the ring preserves you in a state of stasis if you've been killed by something supernatural and acts like an anchor until your soul has a chance to make it's way back to your body, but when you died, your body shut down permanently and your soul went to wherever souls go. Then you came back. There are consequences for that, and they aren't the kind of consequences that go away . . . at least not as long as you're alive."

He ducked his head. "I was reading about it online, and there is a lot out there that's just plain crazy, but I found this one theory that seems about right. I don't remember being dead . . . but I think wherever I went, I brought some people back with me."

"Your parents?"

He shook his head. "Vicki . . . and Anna."

"Interesting."

In confusion, he asked, "What?"

"Well, from what I understand, they were both vampires, right?" I didn't wait for him to nod before saying, "If vampires and humans go to the same place when they die, then it might make sense that you brought those two back, but why not your parents if it has to be people who had close ties to you? Why is it only vampires? If vampires and humans don't go to the same place when they die, then it could explain why you aren't seeing your parents, but that would mean that you went where vampires go, which wouldn't happen if you're human, so it makes even less sense . . . unless you bringing them back with you isn't what's happened."

Running his hand down his face, he muttered, "I must be really stoned, because I think that almost made sense . . . So I'm seeing my dead girlfriends because they were vampires, and it's not because I brought them back with me. It's something else?"

"That's as far as I've gotten so far. Without more information, I doubt I'll get much further . . . Have they told you what they want?"

He shook his head. "I think they're mostly trying to get my attention right now, and I am trying to ignore them."

"But they're getting more persistent?" He nodded. "Do you see them at the same time?"

"No, it's usually one right after the other."

"Does one always show up first and the other always second?"

He nodded before giving me a confused smile. "Yeah . . . it's always Vicki first."

"Do you get the same vibe from both?" He started to think about it, and I harshly rushed him, like a drill sergeant. "Quick answer. Yes or no. Do you - "

"No." 

He looked a little surprised, like he wasn't sure why he said that, or maybe it was because of my sudden outburst, so I tried to explain why I'd rushed him. "I'm a big believer in what your instincts tell you . . . at least when confronted with the supernatural . . . why are the vibes you're getting different?"

"Vicki just looks really desperate, and she sounds sad when I hear her say my name. It's like she needs help, and Anna . . . she looks angry a lot of the time, but she's the one I want to see more."

"Could she be chasing Vicki off?"

"What?" 

"Well, it's always Vicki first. Then it's Anna. She looks angry, but she's not so angry that it's keeping you from wanting to see her. Maybe your instincts are telling you that she's not angry with you. Maybe she's angry with Vicki, because she doesn't want Vicki to talk to you." 

"You mean she's jealous?"

"I don't know." Looking off the side, while I thought about it, I spoke mainly to myself. "It would mean that they have to be aware of each other even when you don't see them . . . which begs the question, where do they go when you don't see them? Do they go back to where they were before you died, or are they always around, and you only see them at certain times?"

"I see them when I'm thinking about them." 

He muttered it, like he hadn't really wanted to say it, and I looked at him. "Well, that would've been good to know. It would've saved a lot of time."

"I feel guilty. I'm with Bonnie. I shouldn't be thinking about - "

"They meant a lot to you. They died. You're allowed to mourn them for however long you need and think about them from time to time . . . It's interesting that you think of Vicki, and then immediately think of Anna even if you feel like Vicki is the one that needs help. I'm guessing you trusted Anna more?"

"No, I - "

"Not to speak ill of the dead, especially if they're listening, but I know Vicki had some problems, Jeremy. It would make sense if you trusted - "

He stood up to leave. "I don't know you well enough to talk about any of this. Just forget I said anything."

Well, the tone of that conversation turned pretty fast. When he got to the door, I said, "Talk to the one you trust more . . . Find out what she wants. Confronting this rather than hiding from it will help you come to terms with your new place between the living and the dead."

Stopping, he turned to look at me, conscious of the fact that we were the only two out here now, and what I'd said hadn't been heard by anyone. "Is that what I am?"

"How else would you describe it? You're not a near death escapee. Technically, you are a dead man who can see dead vampires, but you're also alive without being a vampire . . . I wouldn't expect Vicki and Anna to be the last, because I don't think you brought them back from wherever they were if thinking about them is what lets you see them. It's just you. You can see through to the other side now, and for some reason, it must be vampire heaven that you can see. Maybe it's because you were brought back by supernatural means? I don't know, and I don't think it matters as much as testing out what it is you can do. Try thinking really hard about someone else supernatural that's died and find out if you can see that person. Just make sure it's not somebody scary."

In thought, he pounded his fist lightly on the doorjamb before nodding and then looking at me said, "I'll think about it . . . Bye Eve." Pausing before he disappeared, he added, "Happy birthday," and then was gone.


	6. We Can Be Heroes

I was not cleaning this place by myself. I'd clean the hallway leading to my room, since there was less mess there, and it'd make a dent, but we could leave the rest until Caroline and Elena and whoever else had a hand in putting this party together could come back tomorrow and help. 

When I got done with my hallway, I tied the trash bag off at the top and walked towards the living room. I was pretty sure that Damon was still there. I don't think he was done drinking yet. I smiled when I heard the song that started playing. _Heroes_ by David Bowie. I loved this song. Perfect song to end this night with if you ask me.

My smile quickly fell when I rounded the corner. Damon wasn't alone even though the party had long since died. He was on his knees, and it looked like he'd been hurt. I whispered, "Doll Maker," under my breath at the sight of the man standing in profile above him, and in the blink of an eye, it went from being what looked like an unexpectedly tense situation to one where I had to act without thinking. It's hard to describe what that's like, but there's a reason I believed in instincts so strongly. If they are well honed, and you trust them, then they were often the only thing that stood between you and death. 

_One thousand one._ I triggered one of the little stake launchers that were sewn into the sleeves of this jacket and grasped the stake that came out in my left hand as Stefan took off from his position in the middle of the room. I didn't have to think about getting my stake ready. I just did it, because this immediately felt like a fight or die kind of situation even though I didn't know anything about what had been going on in here. Damon was somewhat to my left, and if Stefan was going to kill me, he'd want to get a good look at his brother's face, while he did it. Why? I didn't know. I didn't have time to think about it. I just knew he'd be looking over my left shoulder when he got to me, and my stake needed to be there when he was, not before and not after, but the microsecond that he was.

 _One thousand two._ Stefan's hands touched the sides of my head at the exact moment the tip of my stake came into contact with his eye. I didn't let the feel of that squish and pop, the sound of his growl of pain, or the loss of his finger tips on the sides of my head stop my backwards motion, and the stake went as deep into his eye as as the back of his orbital socket. I twisted to cause more damage and longer recovery time, and then pulled it back out. Without stopping, my hand swung down in a fluid motion to bring the stake down into his upper thigh. 

_One thousand three._ I began to side-step out from in front of him. I didn't have to think that I shouldn't spin around him even though it'd be faster, because I wasn't going to let him be at my back again for any length of time. I just did it.

 _One thousand four._ I turned to face his body as I moved around him and grabbed the stake out of his thigh with my right hand as my left hand went to his left shoulder.

 _One thousand five._ I pulled down on his shoulder as I kicked out at his left knee, and drove the stake up into the middle of his back.

 _One thousand six._ He fell to his knees, and I leaned over his shoulders to thrust the stake into his chest. I didn't have to think that I wasn't going to kill him and to stay away from his heart. It just happened.

 _One thousand seven._ My hands, now free as I left the stake in his chest, I finally reversed the tables on what he'd been planning for me, brought my hands to his head and snapped his neck. 

As he slumped to the floor, sound returned to me, and I felt like I could breathe again. I looked up at Damon who'd gotten to his feet but was still hunched over in the middle of the room and holding onto the back of the couch to support some of his weight. His shirt had a hole in it, but I didn't think that's why he looked . . . well, I wouldn't have thought anything could shake him, but he looked shaken. I told him I wasn't going to kill his brother, but I guess it'd probably looked pretty touch and go there for a couple of seconds. 

I gave him a brief smile that I didn't mean as I said, "How to drop a ripper in less than 8 seconds." He started ambling towards me, like a wounded soldier, and I tried again to get him say something. "I know I said 1 second was enough time to figure something out, but it's probably really 2 if you're unprepared and want it to be effective, and - " Damon got to me, and I quickly glanced at his brother's body before looking up at him and quietly saying, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt him as much as I did." 

It turns out he wasn't interested in anything I had to say. His hands came up to cup the sides of my face as his mouth landed over mine. My eyes closed, and my instincts overrode common sense as I kissed him back. I didn't care that he'd spent most of the night drinking alcohol, which meant it'd been hours since he'd had any coffee, so his lips and hands were a little cold. I didn't care that his hands were covered in his own blood from where he'd been hurt. As my hands went to his waist to keep me steady, I didn't care that the last time he'd done this, he'd drugged me. I didn't care when he pushed me back into a wall and used my little gasp at the unexpectedness of it to deepen the kiss or that his tongue felt a little like he'd been sucking on ice cubes. I didn't care that he tasted of bourbon or that his brother's body was lying somewhere on the ground near us. I didn't care that he loved my sister. I didn't care about any of those things, because there was a part of me that really wanted this, and it was perfect. My instincts let me have it for the briefest of moments until my mind had enough time to think, and then that fear kicked back in with a healthy dose of confusion.

He must've felt me tense, because just before I did it myself, he broke the kiss and pulled back to rest his forehead on mine. I could still feel his breath against my lips, so he didn't go far. I wanted him to do it again. I wanted to run. I wanted to ask why he'd done that and if it was a birthday present or if he was thanking me for incapacitating his brother. I wanted to ask a lot of things I'd never ask, because I didn't want the real answers to those questions. Luckily, I didn't have say anything at all. He took a slightly larger breath before his hands slid from the sides of my head to my collar, so his fingers could slip under and grab the chain of my necklace. 

Letting his fingers trail to the back, he unclasped it and took it off of me, so he could shake my Dad's ring off into his hand and then slip the ring onto my thumb. "You weren't wearing this." I was going to tell him why even though I'd already told him, but he stopped me by saying, "I know it falls off, and you don't want to lose it . . . Tie some string around it or tape if you think getting it resized will make it useless . . . I don't care what you have to do to make it fit, but you are not talking this off again." I never wore it when I was hunting in the past. It was a safety net I shouldn't get used to having. If I did, then I'd think mistakes were acceptable, because, hey if I died, I'd come back. I opened my mouth to say that, and he prevented me from saying anything again. "It won't make you weak." That was close enough to what I was thinking that I nodded against his forehead. He responded with a shake of his head, waited a few moments and then said, "He was going to kill you."

Finally getting a chance to speak, I said the only thing I could. "I know."

"No, I don't think you do . . . My brother would have - "

I put my hand on his chest to comfort him and said, "I understand. You think he's gone." I pulled my hand away, and it was covered in blood. "What did he do to you?"

Standing up and rolling his eyes before looking down at Stefan he muttered, "The quickest way to get your point across is to wrap your hand around a guy's heart and start to squeeze."

"What was his point?"

"He knows we were in Memphis today. He wants me to let him go."

I muttered, "Yeah, well that's not happening," before looking at his brother. If he'd wanted Damon dead, he would've done it. I don't know how his hand ended up in Damon's chest, but I'm guessing that Damon either hadn't known Stefan was there, or more likely, that he had, and, in typical Damon fashion, had been annoying and cocky with his response to whatever Stefan had said to him, because he hadn't thought Stefan would take things to such extremes. Either way, Stefan'd had Damon where he wanted him, and he hadn't taken his chance to kill him when he had it, which meant that even though he wanted Damon to stop looking for him, he wanted his brother alive more. "He wasn't going to kill you."

"I know." Damon's eyes flicked in my direction. "Enter you."

"Damon, I didn't exactly hit him with kid-gloves, and I'm the one still standing." Glancing at Stefan, I added, "Although, I am starting to feel that I treat your brother like my own personal punching bag."

He walked over to Stefan's head and said, "Yeah, well, this time he deserved it . . . Help me get him in the basement."

He bent over to pick Stefan up under the arms, and I went to Stefan's feet, but stopped. "You need blood."

"It can wait."

"No, you - "

Throwing me a look that told me he'd just about all he could take, he said, "I am not leaving you alone with him." I flicked my hand in Stefan's direction and was going to say, 'He's mostly dead. I'll be fine,' but decided against it. It wouldn't make me a very good friend if I added more stress on top of what he was already feeling, and we did need to get Stefan downstairs before he woke up again. The blood was in the basement anyway, so Damon could grab some bags as soon as we got Stefan locked in a cell. I bit the inside of my cheek and nodded before bending down to pick up Stefan's feet. "Just like that?" 

I looked at Damon, as we both heaved Stefan off the floor, and shrugged, while I shuffled after him. "You need blood, and if it means you'll get it faster, then I'll do whatever it takes to make that happen."

"I really should consider almost dying more often. It makes you much more agreeable."

"You didn't almost die, because he wouldn't have killed you."

"Well, if it's not that, then maybe I should consider - "

I shot him a look that said, 'Don't you dare.' It had nothing to do with him kissing me, and I wasn't ready to have him start talking about it. Ducking his head briefly, he averted his eyes before giving me a slight nod. We got Stefan downstairs and into a cell without another word be spoken. As soon as I dropped Stefan's feet, I left to go get some blood bags, while Damon locked the door. I handed him some blood, but he stopped me from dropping a bag in for Stefan too. 

"Damon, he's really hurt." I'd stabbed him how many times? Four? And one of those was in the eye. 

Looking through the bars at his brother's body, he nodded. "Yeah, it might take a little longer, but he'll still heal, and the more energy he uses doing that, the weaker he'll be. The weaker he is, the easier I'm hoping it'll be to make him angry."

Standing next to Damon, I peeked into the cell and said, "You really think he's flipped his switch."

"It's the only thing that makes sense."

"Well, not the only thing. If he knows we were in Memphis today, then Klaus probably does too. Maybe - "

"My brother wouldn't do what he was going to do to you unless he flipped his switch."

"Maybe he wanted you to think - "

"He wasn't bluffing, and you know it, or he wouldn't be where he is right now. The fact is that he knows how much you mean to me, so killing you is the next best thing to killing me." Oh. My eyes focused on nothing in particular in the cell, and I swallowed before moving to the side as he leaned towards me and said, "Which reminds me - " I turned to walk away, and he put his arm out in front of me to block my escape. "We need to talk."

Uh, no we didn't. Without turning to look at him, I said, "You didn't have your switch flipped when you killed Lexi, so - "

I almost flinched when his fingers gently brushed back the hair curtaining my face, so he could see me. "You're no Lexi." I held my breath and refused to look at him, so he quietly said, "That's okay . . . You don't have to look at me. I know. You'd rather take on 100 of my brother in full ripper mode than hear any of this, and that's why I haven't said anything, but I'm not going to let anymore chances pass me by when it seems like you are determined to leave this world before I can tell you, and you need to hear this almost as much as I need to say it."

Please don't ruin this. "Damon, don't - "

"I don't choose you." At his words, I relaxed and looked up at him. That's not what I was expecting, and the smirk on his face told me he'd known that. My eyes narrowed marginally into a glare to let him know exactly what I thought about him worrying me like that, and his grin grew as he took a step back and began to walk slowly back and forth in front of me, like he was professor giving me some kind of a lesson. "I hate that word . . . choose. Makes it seem like there's a choice, and there is no choice . . . It either is or it isn't. It took me a long time to figure that out. I used to think if I was a better man, then maybe I had a chance of being chosen, but that's not how it works, and I have spent the last 2 months trying to figure out how to put it in a way that you will understand."

"I have a perfectly functioning brain."

"Shut up . . . I'm not done yet." His eyebrow quirked up as a warning, and I rolled my eyes as he went back to his slow and steady pacing. "Either being around you makes me feel more alive than I've felt in my entire life, or it doesn't . . . It does . . . Either you make me a better person, or you don't . . . You do. And it's not because you expect it of me, not that you don't think I could be better. Who I am is enough for you." He exhaled a disbelieving laugh as he shook his head and said, "Either I've had that before, or I haven't . . . I haven't . . . I didn't tell you about what happened with Elena because I didn't want you to know. I didn't want it to confuse a situation that I've confused and only saw clearly for myself when I was dying. Either I felt something when Elena kissed me, or I didn't . . . I didn't feel anything in those final moments except regret and maybe fear that I was never going to see you again . . . Either for the first time since I've been a vampire, I feel like it is my responsibility to look after someone else, that person being you, or I don't . . . I have no idea how it happened, but you are my responsibility, and it is a responsibility that I want . . . Either you're my best friend, or you're not . . . You are . . . Either that's all it is, or there is a spark there that I have wanted for as long as I can remember . . . I've kissed you twice now. Trust me that spark is there." Stopping to look at me, he said, "Either I love you, or I don't . . . I do." Just had to slip it in there at the end, didn't he? I ducked my head, and he quietly added, "And I'm not expecting anything over night . . . I will wait as long as it takes for you. If it never happens, then at least I'll have gotten the best friend I've ever had out of it."

I still didn't know what to say or do, but he'd put himself out there, and I didn't want him to feel rejected, because I didn't want to reject him. I just couldn't quite wrap my head around it or really get past how anxious all of this was making me feel. Without looking at him, I reached my hand out to pat him on the chest, and he watched me before breathing out a laugh. Letting my hand slide around to his back, I gave him half a hug, and rested my head on his chest while he wrapped his arms around me and said, "I'll take it." 

I waited a few seconds before asking, "Are you hedging your bets? Is that what this is?"

"No." His hand smoothed down the hair at the back of my head until it go to the ends. "I said I'd wait for you, not that I'd wait to see how things go with Elena first. It'll always be you."

I rolled my eyes and grumbled, "A ham sandwich with - "

"The most beautiful eyes I've ever seen, especially when the light hits them just right."

Patting his back, I muttered, "Laying it on a little thick," and he smiled.

"Well, I'm not retracting it. They're like polished tigers eye stones with flecks of gold I have memorized down to the finest detail."

I don't know why, but it really annoyed me, so I snapped at him. "I thought they were like toffee."

Trying not to laugh, he conceded, "In the dark they are warm and comforting, like the sticky toffee pudding my Mother used to make on a cold winter's night, but in the sunlight they are something to behold."

"Stop it."

Still sounding way too jovial for my liking, he said, "No, I don't think I will, but I know that I've pushed you enough for one night."

He started to pull away from me, and I uttered something, I hadn't intended. "I don't want things to change."

I finally looked at him to see his response. What I'd said could be taken a couple of different ways. He could think I was turning him down. He could think I wasn't and just didn't want things to change. I wasn't sure which way I meant it, but I was leaning towards the second, and he must have too. "Well you didn't want to be friends either, and that worked out."


	7. When Evil Comes Knocking

I woke up, and the first thought I had was that I was glad that I hadn't had more than a sip of alcohol last night. I remembered the last time I woke up after getting drunk, and it was almost enough to put me off of it for life. 

Then I remembered that Stefan was back, and I started to feel fingers of dread wrap themselves around my head and chest when I thought about what happened after we got him into the cell downstairs. I knew that Damon cared about me, and I knew that I cared about him, but what he wanted was more than I could give. If I was honest with myself, I felt something more for him than I should if we were friends, but letting go of that friend safety net meant free falling out into nothing and trusting him to catch me, and what was almost as bad was that he'd apparently already taken that chance on me, which put a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. I didn't want to hurt him, and I had no idea what he expected. How was I supposed to act? How was I supposed to adjust to the idea that everything he said and did around me was because he had this ulterior motive? And how long had he felt this way? 

I didn't want to stay in bed all day thinking about it, so in a huff, I threw my blankets off and got up, thinking that maybe I should get out of the house for a while. I could use a jog to clear my head before figuring out what to do about Stefan, and if I was gone long enough, it meant I didn't have to help clean the rest of this place by myself. Maybe I could even get out of doing the rest of it if I waited until I was sure Caroline and Elena were almost done to come back. I could slip in at the end to help with what was left, and then I couldn't be accused of not helping.

I left without bumping into anyone and was gone for about two and a half hours. The first hour, I spent jogging as far as I could, and the next hour and a half, I walked back. I could have stayed out longer, but the more time I was gone, the more I started to think that I didn't want Damon to think I'd done an actual runner. When I got back, it was probably close to 11. I figured that Caroline would want to run cleaning this place, like a military operation, and get an early start on it at that, but unfortunately, it looked like she wasn't feeling up to it just yet. Except it didn't seem like vampires got hangovers no matter how much they drank. They just slept it off and woke up a little groggy and moody, but more or less fine, or at least that's what Damon did. Maybe Caroline, being a young vampire, didn't have that luxury yet. It still seemed odd though, and when did she even go last night? She didn't say anything before she left. Maybe she wasn't planning on coming back to help with this mess.

After a shower that I used to ponder everything but the one thing I should probably think about, I padded down to the kitchen. Nobody was there. I made myself some toast and considered my options. It appeared that I was going to have to do the cleaning all on my own, which annoyed me more than a little. I hadn't asked for the stupid party. Granted, I'd eventually had fun with Damon, but I could've done that without a hundred drunken high school students falling around the place and leaving their mess behind for me to tidy. Should've had Damon or Caroline compel the kids to clean up after themselves before they left. 

I was maybe 5 minutes into my angry cleaning session when there was a knock at the door. Maybe Caroline had her hands full with cleaning supplies and could knock, but couldn't quite get the door open. Walking to the door, I muttered, "It's about time. Oh, look, here's a surprise party you don't want, and the biggest part of the surprise is that you get to clean it all on your own." I finished my little rant just as I swung the door open, knowing full well that Caroline most likely heard me griping the entire way. What I did not expect to see was a full-grown man standing there. Well, that was disappointing, and I think the disappointment showed on my face. 

I don't think I was the only one caught off guard by the unexpected meeting, although if he was the one knocking, I felt like he should have expected someone to open the door, so it was his responsibility to explain what the hell he was doing here. My eyebrows rose expectantly as I said, "Can I help you? You know if you're the stripper that would've made last night a whole lot more interesting, then you're late, and as a penalty, I think you should clean this mess."

Taking note of how I didn't recognize him, he stepped closer and smiled. "You must be the sister. I heard about you, but I had no idea the resemblance was so . . . identical."

I could almost feel the gears in my head starting to shift and speed up, making connections, and searching for adequate responses to get me out of the trouble, I only now realized that I was in. Pointing to my eyes, I said, "Not identical if you take a closer look." Looking down at my body, I added, "My eyes are different, and I've been told my chest is smaller." Thank you Caroline for verifying Damon's opinion on that. It came in particularly helpful in moments like this when I was trying to convince someone that I wasn't Elena. "Oh, and I'm 100% human." Looking back up at the man, I rolled my eyes before adding, "Witches, right? Always interfering. I guess Elena would've siphoned the doppleganger power away from me until I died in the womb, so they just gave her all the power, and voila, you're left with one identical twin of a doppleganger. It is Klaus, I presume, or would you prefer Niklaus?"

"I loath being called Niklaus."

"Okay. That's what Elijah called you, but if you hate it, then Klaus it is. I am Eve."

Giving me a charming smile, he said, "Well, Eve, if you let me in, you'd be helping me a great deal. I'm looking for Stefan."

"Would that I could, but that's the problem with signing everything over to the cleaning lady and then sending her on an all expenses-paid trip around the world for the remainder of her days." Pausing to smile, I said, "If you're here to help me out with the little conundrum I'm having with Stefan, I would greatly appreciate it."

His eyebrows rose as he said, "Ah, so he is here?"

"Yep." I pointed a thumb towards the basement door and said, "I locked him in a cell last night."

I don't think he believed me. "Did you, now?"

"Well, that's why I'm at a bit of a loss on what to do with him. See, he tried kill me, so I had to deal with him, and - "

"Deal with him how?"

He clearly thought that we were pulling a fast one on him, like Stefan had run away, and we were harboring his fugitive. Without missing a beat, I answered, "I stabbed him in the eye and a few other places before snapping his neck and locking him in a cell. You can imagine that I wouldn't exactly be jumping at the chance to let him go if it means that he's going to continue to try and go all Doll Maker on me, and I can't exactly kill him, because Damon would never forgive me, so it leaves me in a precarious position, but if you were to take him off my hands, and keep him under control, it would help me a great deal . . . providing you give me your word that you won't kill him."

"I don't negotiate. Give me - "

"I'm not asking you to negotiate. I'm asking you to help me not be the bad guy if I let him go. Everyone always thinks the worst of me, and I'm getting a little sick of it, because I'm not good or bad." I caught his attention briefly, but didn't stop to ask him why or to tell him to not start looking around me again, like he was listening for someone else. I used his attention while I had it to keep talking. "I understand that you can't let him go unpunished if he's left of his own accord, because you have a reputation to uphold, but that's not what happened. You want him with you. Fine. Take him. For what? I don't know, and I don't particularly care, but he wouldn't still be alive if you didn't have some use for him. If you give me your word that you won't kill him, or even hurt him, because it's my fault that he didn't come back when you expected him, then I would know that a man such as yourself would want to keep your word providing it doesn't inconvenience you, and it wouldn't more than it already has. Stefan lives, and I don't come out of this looking as awful."

"You expect me to believe that you took my Ripper down alone?"

"I prefer to call him the Doll Maker, and whether you believe me or not, that's what I did. You don't seriously think he's stupid enough to do a runner on you and come straight back here, do you?"

Leaning as close to the threshold as he possibly could, while he examined me, Klaus said, "Your mother thought she was clever too."

 _Sure, bring Mom into this. See how far that gets you._ "She was. Just because she couldn't outfox a man with 1000 years of experience, doesn't mean she wasn't . . . maybe just a little naive."

Seeming amused, his eyes narrowed as he responded with a faux-suspiciousness. "But not you."

"When I need to be." Making sure I appeared as bored as I sounded, I added, "And really I find your attempts to rile me rather pedestrian." I took a step back to look him up and down, and then said, "I was expecting more." His demeanor changed, and his facial features transformed into a more menacing scowl. I responded with a smile that didn't quite meet my eyes. Those stayed glued to his as I said, "That's better . . . Still not what I imagined when I tried to picture evil incarnate, but better." 

"You would challenge me!"

Feigning innocence and ignoring his almost juvenile shouting, I shrugged. "Well, not so openly . . . That wouldn't make me very clever, would it? Nor would negotiating . . . I assume that's what my Mom tried to do. As my father used to say, she was always a poor judge of character . . . All I want is to give you back the Doll Maker and make you leave without me looking too bad."

A cold smile came to his face as he said, "And where is your father? I believe I have him to think for us not meeting on my last visit here."

"Dead." 

Something about my one-word response made him say, "I find it curious that you blame me for that as well. Whatever drove him to his death has something to do with what I did the last time I was here."

Maybe it was irrational, because it was my Dad's choice. He hadn't wanted Elena to turn into a vampire, but I suspected that it was more than that. Whichever of his daughters had been killed in that sacrifice, I think it'd always been my Dad's intention to do what he did. He didn't just happen to remember that story about the woman and her child. He'd known about it all along. Thanks to my Mom, Klaus found out about both of his daughters, and in that situation, the possibility that he could only save one of us threw his plans off kilter, and his commitment to the plan wavered. That's why he gave Damon his blessing to keep me out of it, and sacrificed his life to make sure Elena could have hers. None of that was Klaus's fault, but he was the one who killed Elena and who would have killed me, so he's the one who put my father in that position. How Klaus got all of that from what I'd said, I didn't know, and I refused to let him find out about Elena being alive, but given what he'd already deduced in less than a minute, he could with enough time. 

I took half a step closer, while I studied him, and he met my scrutiny head-on. "There you are. I was beginning to think that your inherent werewolf-driven impulsivity completely overruled your ability to be cunning. It makes you unpredictable for sure, but that ability to be sly is what makes you dangerous. Maybe you're not such a disappointment after all."

Seeing it for the compliment it was intended to be, he relaxed. "Poking and prodding the hybrid to see what he does and how you can use it . . . It's unusual that a child would see me as a adversary . . . even more so that she would want me to be a worthy one. I take it my Ripper really wasn't the competition you'd hoped he'd be."

My eyes searched his face, but I was ever cautious of the fact that he could turn on a dime and find a way to kill me faster than I could stop him, and he had a reason to do it, since I was about 90% sure he now believed that I had done what I said I did to Stefan for some reason. Maybe it was all the weapons I had hidden on me if you took a closer look, and all I was doing was cleaning up after a party. Maybe it was my attitude. Maybe it was something else, but I was almost sure he believed me. "And yet I'm still standing."

The corner of his mouth turned up into a partial smile as he said, "Before I arrived into town, I heard stories that Mystic Falls wasn't safe for werewolves." I unconsciously took a step back, and his smile grew. "Now, I've seen stories grow legs and take on a life of their own, but rarely in such a short amount of time. Some said it was a group of hunters; others, a ghost. I even got the blame once or twice - but the one thing that all those stories had in common was the sheer brutality that was brought down upon the heads of a poor unsuspecting pack outside of Mystic Falls one dark and stormy night."

I muttered, "It wasn't stormy. It would've been a lot harder to get the timing right if there was lightning and - " My eyes narrowed as I cut myself off. "What?" Why was he looking at me like that? 

Resting his arm on the side of the house and causally leaning on it, Klaus looked past me towards the basement and said, "I'll do you a favor and take Stefan off your hands. I'll even give you my word that I won't kill him or his interfering brother." Looking back at me, he leaned closer and whispered, "But I want something in return."

I warily replied, "Of course you do," and he grinned.

With another whisper, he said, "As luck would have it, I'm looking for a driver, and I think you'll do just fine."

Well, this hadn't gone the way I'd thought it would at all. In confusion, I asked, "Can't Stefan drive?"

"I have bigger plans for him."

What the hell was I supposed to say? It wasn't a negotiation. I knew that. It was a tit for tat over a request for help that I'd brought into the conversation for some asinine reason . . . but on the other hand, he was giving me what I wanted. I didn't want Damon dead or for Damon to lose his brother. I'd be able to keep an eye on Stefan and learn more about Klaus. The man standing in front of me wouldn't trust me, and he'd be expecting me to retaliate in some way. This was almost a keep your friends close and your enemies closer kind of arrangement, but at the same time, I think there was more to it. What? I didn't know, but I'd find out. Crossing my arms over my chest, I asked, "What's the pay like?" and his eyebrows rose at my brazenness, but at the same time, he seemed more amused by it than angry. He was a weird creature indeed.

"Not killing the Salvatores isn't enough?"

"I'd really rather not rely on you having to compel people into giving me everything I want . . . The money you give me may get me what I want just the same, but at least I'd feel like I was standing on my own two feet."

He took it under consideration and answered, "I won't kill the Salvatores, and . . . $1000 a week, but you have to do whatever I say."

"You won't kill the Salvatores, $200 a week, and doing what you want is up to my discretion." Looking annoyed, he opened his mouth to argue, and I said, "If what you want is an indentured servant, then I'm not your girl, and frankly, if that's what you're used to having, then I could see why being alive this long might be incredibly boring and make you feel lonely in a crowd of posers all 'oohing' and 'ahhing' over you when none of them mean it. It is not the way to garner real respect . . . If you want that and true loyalty, then do it the hard way and earn it instead of compelling, bullying, blackmailing, or buying it."

"You are an impertinent little - "

Turning away from him, I drily cut him off. "Yeah, you'll either get used to it or kill me. Either way I'm going to get my things before I fetch Stefan for you. Long distance high five on our agreement. Looks like it's all done and dusted."

"We didn't agree - "

Looking at him over my shoulder before I rounded the corner, I interrupted him again. "Can't take it back. We already high-fived on it, and you wouldn't want me to think you're not a man of your word, would you?"

When I got to my room, I didn't put much thought into what I packed. I just threw some clothes into a duffle bag and my weapons in another. I didn't think I had much time, and before I left, I wanted to write Damon a note, but then I struggled with what to say. 

_Damon,_

_Klaus was here. I had to make a deal, but I'll come back - whatever it takes. I left most of my things here, so you know that's my intent._

_I'm wearing my ring, and I promise I won't kill Stefan. I'll do whatever I can to bring him back too._

_Yours,_  
_Eve_

I read through it again. It didn't say much, but I hoped it was enough. I didn't want him to think I was leaving because of what he said last night. We could work through that if I stayed, but if he thought I left because of that . . . well, I didn't want to hurt him, and I didn't want him to hate me. I'd added, the 'yours' at the end, so he'd know that I wasn't running from him. I sighed before putting the letter on my pillow. He had a tendency to just walk into my room whenever he wanted, so he'd probably see it if he came looking for me. 

Time was up. I just didn't think you could keep a werewolf-vampire hybrid waiting for very long. I doubted he had any patience at all. Slinging my duffle bags over my shoulder, I took one of my dart guns out of my weapons bag, walked with purpose down the hall, ignored the man at the door, and put my hand up to signal that I'd only be one more minute before dropping my bags, pulling the basement door open, and descending the stairs. When I got to the bottom step, I froze. 

Apparently, I hadn't been as alone in the house as I'd thought. There was Damon with his hand clasped over Elena's mouth. She did not look happy. Neither did he. I'm guessing the only thing that'd kept him from running up those stairs or stopping me from giving Stefan back was my unruly sister, and Damon not wanting Klaus to know she was here. I would've knocked her out, but that's just me. Damon wouldn't do that to her, and there was something that niggled in the back of my mind and said there was a reason for that. He never said he didn't love her . . . just that it wasn't a choice. I didn't know how much he and Stefan had heard of what Klaus and I had said, or if they knew about our agreement, but that thought in the back of my head did make me think that maybe this was for the best.

Touching my ears, I shook my head in warning. They couldn't say a word, and I couldn't say anything to them, but Stefan was a different story. When I got to the cell door, I could see him at the bars, and while he went from staring at Elena to giving Damon a look that said not to let her do anything to get in the way, the first thing out of his mouth was to me, "So, I take it you're here to let me out."

"Yeah, your bail's been posted, but I want to make sure he doesn't have you kill me before you leave the house, since you are his inside man, so . . . " I raised the dart gun and shot him in the neck, and without looking, aimed it behind me before pulling the trigger a second time. Turning quickly, I had just enough time to note that I'd missed my sister's face and had gotten Damon in the shoulder before I had to shove Elena out of the way and moved to catch Damon as he fell. It wouldn't do to have Klaus hearing two bodies hitting the ground, or he'd know for sure that someone else was down here, and maybe I shouldn't have done it, but I just couldn't have Damon getting involved. 

His eyes started to flutter closed, but the look on his face was one of livid betrayal. Leaning forward to whisper into his ear, I tried to use those final moments to say goodbye. "I'm sorry . . . I'll miss you more than you can imagine." 

When I pulled back, he was out, and then I had to stand to deal with my sister, who was being a little too loud in asking, "What are you doing?"

Placing my hand over her mouth, I pushed her back into the wall, and harshly whispered into her ear, "I am saving their lives . . . I promise, I will do everything I can to bring him back to you." When I got a good look at her face, the glare told me that she didn't put much faith in one of my promises. She was going to make this more difficult than it needed to be, wasn't she? I guess I did owe her one for the funeral. I rolled my eyes, pulled back the hand I had the dart gun in, and used that to pack my fist, while punching her in the chin where her jaw connected to her neck. As her legs gave out from under her, I caught her and propped her unconscious body up against Damon's before taking the dart out of his shoulder. Then I unlocked the door to the cell, so I could jab the dart I'd used on Damon next to the other one in Stefan's neck. That way, if Klaus heard me shoot twice, he'd think I'd shot Stefan both times. Grabbing him under the arms, I started the arduous job of dragging his body back up the stairs.

When I got to the top, the first thing I heard was an amused, "What took so long?"

I threw Klaus a glare as I dropped Stefan, threw the straps of my duffle bags over my head, and then proceeded to grab Stefan's arm, so I could drag him the rest of the way, like I was some kind of cavewoman. "Not all of us have super human strength, you know."

"You could've just let him walk out."

"And have him attack me again? I don't think so."

"I wouldn't have told him to kill you."

So, he had heard what I'd said down there . . . in my normal speaking voice at least. I really hoped he hadn't heard the rest of what happened. I muttered, "You wouldn't have told him not do it either," as I got to the door that he was barring and then pulled my keys out of my pocket to say, "If I'm driving, we're taking my car." He stepped aside, and indicated with his arm, that I could leave. I looked down at Stefan again. "You're not going to help me get him to the car, are you?"

"Absolutely not . . . and since you took it upon yourself to knock him out, you can get the body out of the other car and put it in yours as well."

I briefly thought, 'Here's the moment of truth,' because I still wasn't sure he wouldn't kill me. Taking a short breath, I shook my head and then stepped past the threshold saying, "You're the worst first boss ever."


	8. How Not to Make a Hybrid

As the lone human in this un-merry band of misfits, I sort of felt like it was on me to keep an eye out for poisonous snakes as we trekked through the back end of nowhere. Poking another bush with my machete to see what shook loose, I listened for the distinct sound of a rattle or the more threatening sound of a hiss while ignoring my traveling companions and thinking that I really needed to start reevaluating my life choices. How did I get here on the side of a mountain with these two? 

Stefan had been out for most of the car journey, and when he'd woken up, he hadn't been all that happy about me being there, but it wasn't for my safety. He was just generally annoyed by the idea of me being there, and if that hadn't been Klaus's intention when he brought me, then he sure made the most of it. He had done nothing but poke fun at him since he'd regained consciousness. Stefan responded to it by giving him the silent treatment . . . and that was probably smart until it wasn't, because he broke his silence to start snarking back at him. 

It took so little goading for Stefan to respond to Klaus's taunts that it just showed how irritable he was - whether it was because he was stuck with Klaus or was just hungry, I didn't know. Either way, I had my eye on him and was staying clear. Not that I was going to be buddy-buddy with Klaus either. He was even more likely to fly off the handle over nothing with that werewolf nature of his, and his demeanor with Stefan suggested that he knew that no matter what Stefan threw at him, he'd come out on top. He wasn't just an apex predator. He was _the_ apex predator . . . although right about now, I'd like to drop him in a tank with a great white and see how he got on.

"Are you sure about that? You know, we've been walking for quite some time now. If you need some water, or a little sit down - " Looking back at me, Klaus added, "Or perhaps you could let the girl take him for you for a while."

I rolled my eyes and sighed before going to back to mostly ignoring them. We came around bend and upon a small gathering, and Klaus said, "Thanks to our pal Ray. We've found ourselves a pack." Was this why we were here? He hadn't said much about it on the drive. Mostly he'd annoyed me over the radio and entertained himself with asking stupid questions that were meant to make me uncomfortable. I sized the group up, and they looked like normal people camping. Hardly werewolves, let alone people that would become a new species to end all species. Was I really going to be present for the birth of a new race of supernatural creatures? They wouldn't be as indestructible as him, would they? I guess I'd find out. "Hands off this pack, Little Wolf-Killer." I looked up at Klaus, and he was watching me. I felt a little like a kid with my hand in the cookie jar, and he smirked. "Nothing to be ashamed of . . . It just takes a killer to know one." Nudging Stefan, he added, "Doesn't it, Ripper?"

Stepping away from him, Stefan grumbled, "Let's just get this over with," before walking into the crowd and unceremoniously dropping the dead guy into the middle of it. Klaus followed, and I made my way to the nearest tree where I could have a good view and some distance. The last place I wanted to be was on ground zero when this all kicked off. The dead guy stayed dead for a while longer, and Klaus rambled on about who knows what. I couldn't hear him, but everyone else stood around looking terrified. It took about 20 tense-minutes that felt like an eternity before the dead guy came back and rolled over with a gasp loud enough that I could hear. Klaus looked at Stefan, and said something before Stefan got to his feet and asked, "Are any of you human?"

Much to Stefan's annoyance, Klaus took the spotlight off of him by looking at me and shouting, "Are you volunteering, Little Wolf-Killer?"

I guess it was a reminder that he knew exactly where I was, and if that's why he brought me, then it'd been a mistake. "I don't think you want me for this. I'm loaded with vervain . . . and a healthy dose of wolfsbane. Probably not the best first meal he could have." 

I had vervain every single morning, and while I was packing, I took a shot of wolfsbane mixed with a dash of white oak ash, not that I was telling him about the ash. It was a cocktail I planned on making myself every morning that I was with them. Stefan looked around the crowd again. "Any other takers? Your friend here needs human blood to complete his transition to vampire." 

There's really only two ways I could stop what was about to happen, and that would've been to kill the human they found, except I don't kill humans, or kill the entire pack before Klaus got to them, but I didn't think that was possible, so I mostly watched in rapt fascination at the spectacle before me. Stefan took over handling the human and getting the new hybrid to drink the human's blood, while Klaus force-fed his blood to a female werewolf who tried to interfere and then killed her. It only got more violent from there.

Stefan seemed to be genuinely enjoying his role in all of this, which surprised me and didn't, but Klaus . . . he loved every second of the blood bath that ensued, and I have to say he was impressive. Quick, efficient, no mercy, an absolute killing machine. They were all dead within a matter of minutes. The problem was that he didn't wait to see how the first one turned out first, and really, you could only blame that on his lack of impulse control.

There was a bit of banter between he and Stefan, but I wasn't watching them. I was watching the new hybrid. He didn't look so hot, and I suddenly felt like my choice to hit the trees was an even better one than I'd first thought, because when Klaus caught sight of him, he did not look happy. Something was wrong, and if this went wrong with all of them, I did not want to be the one Klaus took it out on. He could take the massive hissy fit this was sure to unleash out on Stefan . . . Stefan, who seemed to still be throwing out little comments that annoyed Klaus, and I wondered for the first time how smart Stefan actually was. As long as I was wearing my ring, I could come back if I died by Klaus's hand. He couldn't. 

That's what I was thinking when a second hybrid came back, and the first hybrid used the distraction to take off. I went to jump down from my perch, so I could go after him, because if he was unstable, then he couldn't be allowed to be around any people, but stopped when Klaus yelled, "Wolf-killer stay." Looking at Stefan, he said, "You go get him." 

The female hybrid fed on the man she'd literally died trying to protect only a short while ago. While Klaus made her stop feeding on the human, I decided I wanted to get a little closer and jumped to a branch on another tree and then tried another. The female hybrid didn't look like she was doing very well either. Klaus had her sit, and then I heard him grumble, "Nothing to say?"

He threw a glance at me over his shoulder, and that's when I knew that he'd been talking to me. I'd like to know what I was doing here and why he'd sent Stefan off, while telling me to stay. Was it strategic, because I couldn't run as fast as Stefan, or because he didn't want me running away? Or was it part of some game he was playing? I didn't ask any of those things. Getting comfortable in my new tree, I muttered, "So you can have a reason to kick the new girl when you're down? I don't think so."

"Let me guess . . . my new master race is falling before it's even begun."

"Actually, I was thinking that it's like watching a vampire that's been bitten by a werewolf, but worse . . . it's not the venom. It's their own werewolf blood that's attacking them, hence the bleeding from their eyes . . . and if it goes the way I think it will, then they're all going to eventually go mad before they die. It's like the piece that is needed to bridge the two halves is still broken even though the sacrifice worked on you . . . Only two have woken so far. There's still time to figure out what to do with the others. They don't have to complete the transition straight away."

I finished just as another one woke up with a gasp, and Klaus indicated that he wanted the compelled human to go feed it, before saying, "It's a simple process. My blood. Die. Feed. It will work."

"No, it should work . . . It's not. I'm guessing that in 1000 years, you've been bored enough to try this on other werewolves and have gotten similar results. Think outside the box and come up with something else . . . maybe it takes feeding on something other than a human . . . like a regular run of the mill werewolf or another hybrid?" Was it because Elena was still alive? I didn't know, but I certainly wasn't going to brainstorm that idea to him. Another hybrid woke up, and he ignored me and tried again and again and again. It was the definition of insanity according to Einstein and a tremendous waste of life. He should've waited to see if this would work before he went and killed all of them.

Dusk came quickly, and night soon followed, but the time seemed to fly, because as he went blindly from new hybrid to new hybrid and made them complete the transition, I watched his new creations with fascination as they slid further and further from humanity. Lying on my stomach on the branch that supported me, I was careful not to make a sound until I was sure of what I was seeing. It may have been the epitome of senseless death on a large scale, but it was also something else that left me feeling mildly excited. 

I breathed out, "Revenants," and Klaus's head snapped in my direction before he looked at what I was watching. He wasn't quite done making them all finish the transition yet, but the ones he had were bleeding from the eyes, growling, and stumbling around in aimless patterns. His shoulders dropped, and he looked back at the two that were left to complete the transition. I noticed that he started just ripping their hearts out instead of making them feed on their human friend, which I took to mean that his experiment was over. Now mine could begin. 

Carefully taking a vervain dart and a wolfsbane dart that I'd hidden away in my pockets, I left the vial of white oak ash where it was and quietly snapped the wolfsbane dart in half, waited for the nearest hybrid to wander under my tree, and let a few drops fall on his head. He immediately started sizzling and hissing before looking up and spotting me. With a growl, he tried to jump up and grab me, and not knowing if he'd have normal wolf jumping capabilities or not in his condition, I quickly got up and stood on the branch. His actions got the attention of some of the others, but I wasn't concerned about it yet. Snapping the vervain dart in half, I dripped that on another one's head, and got a similar sizzling, result. Well, now I knew they were affected by both vervain and wolfsbane. That would come in handy in the future if Klaus ever successfully made a hybrid. 

I silently slid my machete out of it's sheath and flicked a look in Klaus's direction. He'd finished with the others and the human. Now, he was just watching me play with his creations. I felt the need to ask, "Do you want to do it, or shall I?"

Looking at the growing horde beneath me in absolute defeat, he was was across the camp one second and under me tearing them apart the next. Standing there, I was a little disappointed that I wasn't going to have a chance to kill any revenants, and wondered once again what I was doing here, but at the same time, I think he earned just a little bit of my respect. He didn't get to all of them before some of them just keeled over and died on their own, but he got to most of them. When he was done, I was sitting there with my back against the tree, and my knees pulled up to my chest. He turned away from the slaughtered remains of the last hybrid and walked towards the large flat stone in the center of the camp, while muttering, barely loud enough for me to hear, "You can come down now."

Well, I hadn't been up here because it's what he wanted. I chose to climb up here, and I chose to let him clean up his own mess if it's what he wanted. I hopped down anyway and immediately went to the nearest hybrid to start a cursory investigation. Taking their hearts seemed to work at killing them. I wondered if that meant taking a head would too. What was so special about these things again? Head or heart, just like a werewolf or vampire, but both vervain and wolfsbane were toxic to them. They could walk in the sun, I guess, and they could change at will, but from a vampire-hunter perspective, the ways to bring them down remained the same. They didn't desiccate or go grey and veiny, but died like werewolves. All that was different about them is they drank blood. I checked this guy's fangs and was trying to determine if they looked more like a werewolf going through the change or a vampire's, when I heard Klaus say, "Are you quite done now?"

I looked around, but didn't see Stefan. When I glanced in Klaus's direction, he was staring at the beer bottle in his hand. Had he been talking to that? His eyes flicked in my direction, and I rather stupidly asked, "Me?" I don't know why, but I was really having a difficult time adjusting to the fact that I was here . . . with _him_. I guess most people wouldn't know how to react to their heroes. I didn't know how to react to what was essentially my version of the Bogeyman from my childhood talking to me. I could handle it earlier back at the house, because it's what I'd had to do to get him out of there, but now? Now I was on a road trip with him, and it was a little too surreal. 

Pointing his bottle in the direction of the bodies, he added, "They're all dead. It's just you." His eyes went to the body I was examining, as he asked, "Are you done looking for weaknesses you can exploit in the future?"

My eyebrows rose in immediate surprise before I looked back down at the hybrid in front of me. "I, uh," Cutting myself off, while I stood, I started walking over to him and said, "I think I have enough for now." Sitting next to him, a little unsure of what I was supposed to say or do, I awkwardly looked around the place before trying, "I found it really quite admirable that you dealt with the fallout yourself. They were your responsibility from start to finish." Focusing on the ends of my army jacket sleeves, I added, "I guess I don't understand what's so special about them. I could see how they might be a problem for other vampires if those fangs of theirs cause the same kind of damage that a werewolf's do, but there is nothing about them that changes my job description."

"You don't understand, because you don't know what it is to be truly alone."

"Actually, I do . . . until about 6 months ago, the world outside my parents didn't know I existed. Now it's way too much. I think I prefer being a ghost." I felt him look at me, but then Stefan came walking through the trees carrying the same dead body he'd been carrying when he got here, and Klaus got up. I stood up too when I saw the bite on Stefan's arm, and immediately my eyes went to the back of Klaus's head. He had to heal him. I'd promised Damon and Elena that I'd bring Stefan back to them. Klaus yelled in frustration at the sight of his last hope being yet another corpse before smashing his bottle, and I took a step back to put some distance between us before assessing Stefan's bite again. It looked bad, but Stefan would have some time before it really started to do a number on him, so even if now wasn't the time to ask Klaus for any favors, there would be more time later.

Then my eyes were on Klaus for a different reason as he yelled, "I did everything I was told!" Why was he yelling at Stefan? He'd just been here quiet, seething, but calm, and now he was letting loose. Did he consider Stefan a friend, like an honest to god friend? Is that why he felt like he could show his true pain with him? Stefan . . . if I had to guess, I'd say that was apprehension on his face. He didn't necessarily want to say anything to bring that ire that Klaus was feeling down on him. That seemed prudent. His expression turned to poorly concealed fear as Klaus said, "I should be able to turn them . . . I broke the curse. I killed a werewolf. I killed a vampire. I killed the doppleganger." 

I stayed where I was, my mind going back to the 'not drawing attention to myself' idea. Almost like he was reading my mind, Stefan looked past Klaus towards me, and I threw him a glare at the suggestion that look gave. There had been a time and a place for me to have been in that sacrifice, but that time had passed, and I was no longer willing to do it, particularly now that I'd seen these hybrids up close and knew that they weren't all that special. If Klaus created them, then it wouldn't be a doomsday scenario the way I'd always envisioned. I'd have a better shot of stopping them if I was alive than if I was dead. Waving his hand in my direction, Klaus shook his head, while deep in thought. "It's not her . . . She may be a novelty, but there are enough differences that I know she's not a doppleganger. I got the right one." Looking at Stefan again, like he was really only seeing him for the first time since he'd gotten back, he said, "You look like Hell."

Stefan started talking, said he was dying, and gave an explanation for why he'd had to kill the first hybrid, but in all honesty, I didn't think it was really all that necessary. Klaus'd just had to do the same thing with all of the others, but I guess Stefan wanted something else, because he eventually got around to saying, "I failed you. I'm sorry. Do what you have to do." Is this what groveling without asking for what you really want looked like? I think it was, and it shouldn't have worked, because it was poorly concealed manipulation, but apparently it did.

I watched as Klaus walked away from him and did the single most unsettling thing I'd seen him do. It was the way his eyes changed, as he bit his hand to get blood to give to Stefan . . . The look on his face when he did it, like a wounded lion, his eyes, and the fangs and . . . Hm. He had to go and ruin what I was thinking by confirming what I'd suspected. Apparently, Stefan was the only comrade he had left. How sad was that when it was obvious that Stefan hated him?


	9. Getting to Know You

Oh. My. God. Stefan ate a lot, and I mean a lot. He was practically getting 3 square meals a day with snacks in between, and Klaus was encouraging it, not that he was much better. The number of bodies I'd seen them drop since I'd been with them was . . . well it was life changing, and not just for the people they were killing. I know I said I didn't care about the people that died, and I didn't when they were cold bodies I was using to try and track my prey, but it was entirely different when my prey was right in front of me slaughtering their prey. I'd lived with my Mom being a vampire for 2 years. I knew what she did when she went out hunting or slipped up and killed someone in front of me, and I could handle that, because she'd found a way to survive that I could tolerate. I lived with Damon, and I knew about his past, but he'd really cleaned up his act and had gone to blood bags almost all the time now. 

This was entirely different. I knew what a ripper was. They were essentially blood junkies, and they were exceptionally rare. I'd killed at least two, and that was why they were rare. They were so easy to find because of the number of bodies they left behind. Right now it was taking everything I had not to kill Stefan too. I really had to hold on tight to the notion that Damon loved his brother to keep myself from ending Stefan once and for all, but I was coming to the end of what I was willing to accept, and I'd only been with them for a couple of days. 

Klaus didn't take pleasure in the hunt. He took pleasure in the kill, which ended immediately after his play things were no longer of any use to him, and then the bodies he dropped were quickly forgotten as he moved onto something else that amused him. Stefan took pleasure in all of it from start to finish, but his hunts lasted about 2 seconds, and his killing lasted maybe another 10. It was never enough, because he'd never be able to quench his thirst. He really did deserve to die, whether he was here because he'd saved Damon and was protecting Elena, or not. 

Had they been like this the entire summer? Probably, but Damon and I had only found a handful of bodies, which meant that he and I had both been right in a way. I had been right in that the bodies we found were important. They weren't important because Stefan was leaving them for us to find, which is what Damon had told me, but they were important to Klaus. They were discarded, because whatever the victims knew had been useful, and Klaus wanted to put a move on the information they'd given him as fast as possible. The other bodies he and Stefan dropped, he at least took the 4 seconds required to compel a random human he was using as a servant to clean up the mess.

Stefan carelessly threw the woman he'd just drained to the ground and turned to the little girl that'd been with her, and I didn't think. I just acted. Taking the gun I had in my hand every time they ate, so I could be prepared if one of them got a little overzealous and tried to eat me, I lifted it and shot Stefan with a wooden bullet through the temple from my position on the alley wall. I hadn't said much since the night of the failed hybrid attempt, because I'd mostly been observing. I'd let a lot slide, and I was never far from their carnage, which is most likely why he hadn't thought I'd do anything.

Klaus laughed, and the little girl jumped at the sound of my gun before shrinking back in horror as Stefan's body landed at her feet. She'd been compelled to stay where she was and not scream. He'd done the same thing to her Mom, but he never told them not to be afraid. He wanted his victims afraid to their last drop.

Crouching down in front of her, I ignored Klaus saying she'd be better off dead. I assumed that was because what she'd seen would scar her for life. Most kids would probably be dead behind the eyes after what she'd seen, and she wasn't far off it. The jump at the sound of my gun had been a reflex more than any real sign of life. I doubted she was really even aware of what was happening anymore. If humans, like vampires, could turn off their consciences, then they could also shut down after a traumatic event when they became so overwhelmed by fear that their brains couldn't handle it, and that's about where she was. Nothing I said or did now would be able to help her, and in a way Klaus was right. Maybe she would be better off dying than face the lifetime of damage this had done. She wasn't a natural born hunter, so her instincts weren't to use what she'd seen as fuel to hunt the things that had killed her Mom when she got older. 

There were tears staining her cheeks, and even if she could scream, I doubt she would. She'd been left practically catatonic . . . and yet when I showed her an ounce of kindness by giving her an easy smile and quietly telling her that I wouldn't let the bad man hurt her, her shoulders relaxed before her eyes flicked up to my face . . . not my eyes, just my face, but it was enough. She was scared of me, but there was more life in her than someone who just found her like this would think, and more than that, she still had hope that was tucked away deep down where nobody could take it, hope that this was over, hope that I wasn't like Stefan, hope that I wouldn't hurt her . . . it didn't matter why she had it or how small it was, it was there. 

I didn't dare touch her even though I would've loved nothing more than to wipe her tears and give her a hug. That's not what she needed. Without taking my eyes from her, I said, "She's not completely broken." She shrank back from Klaus when he came to crouch next to me, and I looked at him over my shoulder before sighing in frustration. "Wipe your mouth, you dope. You're still wearing her Aunt."

He chuckled before giving me a side-glance and using his sleeve to do what I said before he went back to examining the girl. Finally he asked, "What do you see that I'm not?"

"She has hope, and that's enough."

"How can you tell?"

"Because she wants to believe that either I won't hurt her or that this is over, which means she still has hope that it could be over . . . it's not much, but it's something she can build on as long she doesn't remember this."

Sounding somewhat intrigued, he looked at her again as he said, "An experiment?"

"I know enough about compulsion to know that the more primal part of her brain, the one that controls emotions, it won't forget the way her more conscious mind can, but she's young, and if she can feel that hope, no matter how small, then she can still grow up to have something that resembles a normal life."

Mocking me, he asked, "Do you want to do it, or shall I?"

I threw him a glare before turning my attention back on the little girl. "I probably could fix this given enough time, or someone could, but time isn't something we have, and I'm not sure that I have the right skill set to make things better for her . . . unlike the situation with the revenants, which I would have been fine settling myself . . . You, on the other hand, have the ability to use your gifts to do something good here."

"And what makes you think I would?"

"You have no reason not to do it."

Looking back at the girl, he said, "Some might say it would be wrong to strip her of this character defining moment."

"Yeah, well, I'm guessing those that say that have never had their parents's heads literally bitten off in front of them at the tender age of 6."

Again Klaus went with that annoying cocky attitude that I'm sure Elijah was talking about when he said their sister called him a 'smug twat.' "Maybe you underestimate her."

"Maybe you underestimate yourself." All joviality left his face, and I added, "She hasn't done you any harm, and she won't when she gets older, because she's not the type. That leaves you in the unique position of doing something kind for her simply because you can and not because you're going to get anything out of it by preventing her from retaliating in some way . . . Call it your own character defining moment."

"You think me incapable of mercy." 

Standing, I looked down at him and shook my head. "Uh uh . . . no, you are not going to do something good just to prove to me that you can . . . Do it for the right reasons . . . Do it for her." Looking from the little girl to her Mom and then over at the dead Aunt, I added, "And would it kill you to be a little more discerning in who you have for dinner? Use what you are to help clear some of the worst humanity has to offer instead of whatever the hell it is you've been doing." 

Doing a poor imitation of him, I said, "I need something to do. Oh, look, there's some random people for me to kill. Aw, now they're dead. What should I do now?'" Waving my gun in disgust towards the woman's body, I started my rant. "I mean what is this? I'll tell you what it is . . . It's a complete waste, and it's boring, and don't say I don't understand, because I don't know how to have fun . . . I _know_ how to have fun. Fun is hunting your target, fighting in the moment, executing a plan perfectly, and reveling in the victory over your adversary." 

Pointing in the dead woman's direction again, I asked, "Does she look like an adversary to you?" before raising my hand a fraction of an inch and pulling the trigger without taking my eyes off of Klaus. I heard the thump of Stefan's body as it fell back into the position it'd been in before he'd started trying to get to his hands and knees and then said, "This is not fun, and I get that nothing can kill you, so the thrill of a good fight is lost on you, and I also get that you have done just about everything there is to do, which makes it all seem so 'been there and done that,' but there has got to be more to you than this . . . this homicidal frat boy facade you've got going on."

"Feel better now?" Taunting me, he asked, "Got it all out of your system?"

My shoulders dropped as I sighed and looked away from him. "Not really . . . Just help her, so when Stefan wakes up again, she won't know who he is when he undoes his compulsion."

"You're lost." I glanced at him, and he said, "You were hoping I'd have answers for you."

And that right there was another reason why I'd been mostly observing instead of talking. The less I said, the less he'd be able to get inside my head and figure out things I didn't want him knowing. "Not answers . . . maybe that you were the answer to what I'm supposed to do now. You should've stayed a mystery."

His eyebrows arched. "You find me a disappointment."

"I don't know what I find you. You're all over the place." With another sigh, I looked down briefly before shaking my head and looking at him to offer him some advice, and I think that because that's how it came across, he didn't rip my heart out for saying it. "If you think these hybrids are going to fill that void you feel and give you a purpose, think again." 

His face was unreadable for a few moments before his eyes turned to the little girl. If he killed her now, I was going to gut him in his sleep. Ducking down, so he could see her face as she shied away from him, he cooed, "Hello, Sweetheart." Her eyes flicked in his direction, and then he had her. I momentarily felt powerless to stop him from making things worse, but that was before he started talking. "Once the scary man tells you that you can go, you'll run home and won't remember what happened to your Mum and her sister today. As far as you know, they have gone on an amazing adventure, and they won't be coming back. You'll miss them, but it's important that you know it's not your fault they left. You'll dream sweet dreams at night, make friends, and live your life to it's fullest. Nod if you understand." She nodded in a daze, and then he looked at me. "I can show mercy . . . just so you know," before getting to his feet and looking down at Stefan to add, "Have fun getting him to play his part when he wakes up," as he made his way to my car.


	10. Bright City Lights

I don't know how long I'd been with them. More than 3 weeks and less than 4? I'd never been to Chicago, and it may almost be morning, but I wanted to go explore. Instead, we were parked outside these storage lockers, like a small group of drug dealers, waiting for that stupid truck that'd been following us. I heard Klaus clear his throat and rolled my eyes before getting out of the car and walking around to his side, so I could open his door for him. I guess it is what I was being paid to do. When the truck pulled up behind us, I knew better than to ask what was in there, but it seemed important. 

I was getting better at listening without appearing to listen. All I had to do was stare at the buildings in the distance and wait until I heard the inevitable, "Little Wolf-Killer, we're leaving." It made it look like I wasn't paying attention, because he had to tell me we when he wanted to go, but I was. I know Stefan was questioning what he was doing here just as much as I was, but he was being vocal about it. I know that Klaus was dead set on finding out what was going wrong with his hybrids no matter what anyone said to him about it, so we were here to see one of his favorite witches. I knew that Stefan had lived here in the 20s, Klaus had too, and he was waxing all nostalgic about it. What I didn't know was what was in the damn truck. It might be my ticket out of here.

"Do you want me to drive?" 

I looked at Klaus. I guess he had been talking to me. "No, you're all right."

Extending his hand towards the city, he said, "You said you've never been to Chicago. It's a much better view when you're not in the driver's seat."

"I like being in the driver's seat." 

He smirked. "Let go. Live a little."

I don't think he understood how much this car meant to me. "I know how to live. I just - "

Stefan interrupted me. "I don't even know why you allowed her to bring this car. It's not up to your usual standards, is it?"

I threw him a look. "Leave my car alone."

His eyes narrowed as he squared up to me. "Or what?" 

He'd been like this for a while now. Maybe it was because I'd seen him at his worst day in and day out. Maybe it was something else. And I wasn't sure when it'd started. When I shot him sometime near the beginning? Well, if it was that, then he should be thanking me for keeping him from crossing that line. Maybe he expected me to keep him from crossing more, but I wasn't his Blood Junkie Anonymous Sponsor, and there was only so much I could do with the always volatile Klaus with us. I'd been lucky Klaus had been in a good mood that day. 

Either that's when it'd started, or Stefan had been like this since he woke up after we left Mystic Falls on our way to Tennessee at the very beginning, and it got worse after I shot him. He just kept pushing and pushing, and it was wearing thin on top of the time I spent tiptoeing around Klaus, while he tried to figure out what was going wrong with his hybrids. 

I sliced my finger on the edge of a stake inside my sleeve and smirked when I saw Stefan tense at the smell before lifting my finger to my lips and blowing the blood drops in his eyes. The large amounts of vervain had an immediate effect as he hissed and clutched at his face, but before either of us could do more, a laughing Klaus, stepped between us, and I turned away from both of them with a little growl. Rounding the front of my car without opening any doors for anyone, I said, "Like I said, leave it alone . . . and while you're at it stop being a dick to me. I now consider us even for all the things I've done to you. The time I've devoted to patiently ignoring you is over, and I've been more than reasonable considering 3 out of the 5 times were me protecting you in one way or another. If we're even, expect me to stop taking it." 

"But we're not even, are we? You're here, and Elena isn't." 

Is that what he was doing, acting like he hated me because Elena was dead? Smart, but annoying, and I wasn't putting up with it anymore, especially since she wasn't dead, and I was really missing Damon, like homesick kind of miss. I'd only ever felt that with my Mom when I was little. I wasn't in the mood to play along. "Well, I'm done playing nice, so - "

"It's so hard to tell. You're never nice . . . That's kind of your thing, isn't it? Starting fights, crashing funerals - "

"I didn't crash that fucking funeral. You and your friends are so blinded by your imaginary halos that you still can't see past yours even after a summer of mutilating bodies up and down the Eastern Seaboard . . . You're no better than the rest of us who are in the gray, Doll Maker . . . Newsflash. Just because you make them look alive after you kill them doesn't make it so, you fucking creep." I climbed in the front seat and then huffed in frustration before climbing out and going back around to open Klaus's door. I paused when he didn't immediately get into the car and said, "I'm not apologizing." 

"I wouldn't dream of having you do such a thing." Reaching back to pat Stefan on the shoulder he said, "Stefan's going to sit in the back and behave." Stefan gave him a look that said exactly how annoyed he was by that before getting into the back, and then Klaus turned to me and held out his hand. "Keys."

"You understand that I built this car." No way was I telling him that I built it with my Dad. He didn't need to know just how sentimental I was about my baby, or he'd use it against me . . . sort of the way I was planning on using whatever was in that container truck against him.

"I do now."

"It's mine, not yours."

He seemed amused. "And I'm sure you'll find a way to pay me back ten fold if anything were to happen to it."

My brow furrowed. "Yeah, that's about right."

"Then rest assured that it will be safe in my hands."

He seemed so earnest. With a little sigh, I capitulated and reluctantly dropped the keys into his hand before walking around him to get in the passenger seat. While he went around the front of the car, Stefan sat forward and said, "It's probably for the best you're not going to go to high school. You would've had a difficult time if it only takes you this long to break."

Right, and he was the poster child for restraint. He just couldn't play nice even when he was told to do it, could he? "Don't you think I know that? They're already calling me names . . . Evil Twin and Bizarro Gilbert were the nicest ones I heard at that stupid party."

Sliding into the car, Klaus asked, "The party you had the night before I arrived? You never did say why you had it."

He'd never asked. Turning to look out of the passenger window, while he started my car, I responded, "I didn't have it. I showed up at a house full of drunken high school students and was told it was a surprise birthday party for me. I think Caroline wanted to use it as a chance to introduce me to the community . . . turns out no introduction was needed." I wasn't an idiot. I knew Elena, Bonnie, Matt, and Jeremy hadn't done it intentionally, but all it took was a look or a careless throw away comment about me doing something like crashing Elena's Dad's funeral, and that was all it took for rumors to run rampant in a small town. 

I heard Stefan mutter, "Evil Eve," from the backseat, and I ignored it until he said, "Or is it Evie?" 

I should call him Snooping Stefan. Damon'd had me in his phone under both names at one time or another. My head whipped around to look at him, and I couldn't be any clearer with my tone. "Only one person gets to call me that, and it isn't you." 

He smirked. "Such an easy target."

"Such a juvenile delinquent. Forever 17 and always a pain in the ass."

"Eve."

"Yes, Klaus?"

He did a double take at the sweetness of my changed tone and then said, "He's right, my dear. Something my Rebekah has never learned is to not rise to it. It makes you an easy, more enjoyable target."

I went back to facing the front and shook my head. "It's just him and people like him. He annoyed me before I even officially met him." That wasn't entirely true. It was Elena that had annoyed me, not Stefan. I suppose some of my feelings about her may have rubbed off onto him, but that's not the Stefan I'd been dealing with the last while. It'd been this jackass, and I couldn't stand this guy.

"And how did the two of you meet?"

He was looking through the rearview mirror, so I knew he wasn't talking to me. I took the opportunity to appreciate the fast approaching skyline, while Stefan took that one. "Officially? After she clawed her way out of a coffin and walked into our house unannounced."

Klaus gave me a side-glance before saying, "A coffin?"

I tried to focus on the city and said, "And the tomb encasing it. I wasn't buried or anything."

"And you were in a coffin because?"

"Apparently, the only thing that could be done with me was to drug me and stick me in a coffin during the ritual to break your curse."

His eyebrows rose as he made a face that would make it appear like he thought that made sense before he said, "And you walked into his house unannounced, because?"

"I'd been living there for months without him knowing."

He started laughing and looked through the rearview mirror again. "You really are slipping, my friend . . . Tell me about the unofficial meetings."

Well, he hadn't asked me, so Stefan could take those too and omit what he wanted that would make him look bad. I wished that I'd known I'd be coming to Chicago before I left my computer behind at the boarding house. If I had, I might've looked up what some of these buildings were called. The closer we got, the bigger they seemed, and I was fascinated by not only the architecture, but some of the sculptures I saw between buildings. I turned to watch one go by and was drawn out of my musings when Klaus said, "This car handles beautifully. I can see why you go so fast on an open road." 

Was he complaining about my speeding? Or paying my car a compliment? I didn't know. "Thanks? But I speed because with you and your little side kick in the back, I figure I can get out of any speeding tickets . . . not that I'd receive them anyway. My IDs are all fake."

"Ah yes, you're a ghost . . . Why is that again?"

I looked at him. Between Stefan and I, he was fishing for answers, and I should wonder why, but really, I just wondered, why now? "You tell me."

"Are you playing coy, Little Wolf-Killer?"

"I'm interested to see how that mind of yours connects things."

Glancing at me briefly, he once again seemed amused as he said, "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles."

I flippantly replied, "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat . . . See, I can quote Sun Tzu too."

"And you know exactly what I meant, which is why you returned with a quote that was suitable for responding without making it look like you were." 

He gave me a look that said not to deny it, and I sighed before responding to his quote more directly. "Maybe . . . I'm also curious."

"I still don't match up to your expectations."

I answered honestly. "No . . . not better than or less than, just different."

"What were you expecting?"

"Cold-tempered, not hot-tempered. That may have changed a little when Elijah told me about the werewolf-side of you, but I still thought it'd be less a part of your personality than it is . . . You're just as calculating and violent as I imagined, but you're not sterile about it. I thought you'd be uncaring rather than the way you are, and - "

"How am I?'

"You care too much." His eyebrows rose, but he didn't respond, so I said, "And I didn't think you'd have a sense of humor, because after 1000 years, what could you possibly find funny anymore? A jaded old soul without an ounce of humanity . . . not you." 

He was focused on driving, but I could tell he was thinking and not quite hurt, but something along those lines. "You are describing someone I know." Giving me a brief smile, he said, "But I'm afraid it isn't me." His eyes took on a thoughtful look again as he took a crack at his original question. "If your parents hid you away from the world, it wasn't just to hide you from me, or you'd say that . . . It was to hide you from me, so you could replace your sister at the sacrifice. I'd still have just as much trouble as I'm having now with the hybrids, but I wouldn't have broken the curse on myself."

Sitting back in my seat, I tried not to look too impressed. "Pretty good."

His brow furrowed. "They raised you as a sacrificial lamb but trained you to be a wolf in sheep's clothing."

Going back to looking out the window, I shook my head. "They thought I was born weak, so they pushed me hard, particularly my Dad. That I was actually trained in the meantime didn't seem to factor into their plans at all."

He didn't say anything, so I looked at him again, and he had that wistful, almost hurt look again. He gave me a quick smile to diffuse my scrutiny before saying, "And yet your father changed his mind at the last second."

"I don't think he would have if you hadn't known about both of his daughters. One was better than two, but two was too much."

"So, he chose to save the weaker of the two?"

"He chose to save the one he raised." _And die for the one he didn't._

"He didn't hate you despite your perceived weakness."

"No." Looking back out the window, I added, "Damon thinks our fathers would've been great friends . . . same kind of man. Mission, honor, and duty before kids. There was a time when I agreed. Now that Dad's dead, I'm not sure that I do."

Klaus asked, "How did he die?" and Stefan said, "She wasn't there. She was locked in that coffin, and our fathers were nothing alike."

 _Nicely played, Stefan. I'll go along with you on this little distracting argument._ "I don't know. He may have changed at the end, but the way he treated me before that, particularly in the last few years . . . I don't think there was much of a difference."

"You never met my father, so what would you know about it?"

"More than you think . . . And what would you really know about it? Were beatings the only time you got his attention? Nope, but then you were his favorite."

"My brother - "

"Wasn't."

I didn't know what he was planning to do in retaliation, but Klaus apparently did, and fitting into the big brother role he'd started taking on more and more recently, he looked back between the seats and pointed at Stefan, while giving him a clear demand. "Don't."

When I looked back, Stefan had slumped in his seat, like a petulant child. Had his target been me or the car? Maybe both. He could get both of us if he punched his hand through the seat and ripped out my heart. What I'd said hadn't exactly warranted that kind of response, so maybe it just would've been the car, but even then . . . he was getting desperate to keep me from bringing up any reference to Elena still being alive. We'd never spoken about it, but by now, he should've realized that I wouldn't say anything. He's the one that almost screwed up earlier by bringing up the funeral. That could've gone horribly wrong . . . unless it was a test to see what I'd do on something that was sure to trigger an outburst from me. Even then, I hadn't said anything about her, but then I did bring up my Dad dying, and that was an easy in for Klaus. 

Maybe Stefan had wanted to punish me for that? Or had he even blamed me for it? I didn't know him well enough to be able to put together the pieces of how his mind worked, because his mind was mostly controlled by the blood lust these days. I just knew that he'd marginally showed me his cards tonight by letting me know that he was acting this way because he wanted Klaus to believe that he hated that I was alive and Elena wasn't. It really was clever, but it was also taking a massive toll on me to be under constant verbal attack and always under threat of a physical one.


	11. Should I Stay, Or Should I Go

It was morning when we finally got to where we were going. I was getting tired, but as we walked into the club, my eyes went immediately to the stage and the piano I saw to the side of it. I didn't even notice the woman who owned this place until I heard her say, "You've gotta be kidding me," but even then I wasn't really paying attention. 

I ignored the other three as I made my way towards the piano, such was my need to play. I was across the bar when I heard Klaus say my name. _Ugh, just leave me alone for 5 minutes._ I glanced behind me when he said, "Don't be rude. Come meet Gloria." 

Looking from him to her, I pointed in the direction of the piano and asked, "May I?" It wasn't a greeting, and I wan't going back over to them, but at least I'd asked. 

She smiled. "Sure, you go on ahead." And that was all the permission I needed as I hopped up on the stage and bounded over to my instrument of choice. Sitting down, I allowed my fingers trail over the keys and let them help me decide what to play. _Zombie_ from the Cranberries. Dark, angry, just right. From there, it transitioned into _Where Did You Sleep Last Night._ It was a song made famous by Leadbelly, but I guess I'd always loved Nirvana's Unplugged cover for the sheer emotion in Kurt Cobain's voice. I'd come up with my own arrangement for it, but kept the feel of that one, the pain, the anger. It was all there. When it ended, I released a slight breath I hadn't known I'd been holding and kept myself from starting another song when Gloria said, "Don't think I've ever heard that song quite played like that." 

My eyes darted to where Klaus and Stefan should be to keep up the act of not being aware of my surroundings, and Gloria felt the need to explain why they weren't there. "Known a lot of musicians in my time, so I know you're not planning on going anywhere for a while. It seems like you've got something you need to get out . . . I told 'em it'd be best to leave you be for now." Looking at the keys as she turned to go to the bar, she added, "Don't let me stop you. Can't imagine your traveling companions are all that easy to get along with."

No, they were not. Turning back to the keys, I let my hands choose what was next, and they decided _Twenty Four Hours_ by Joy Division would be best. I played another song after that and another and then lost track of how many I'd played by the time she opened the doors. I glanced at her, and she nodded. It was time to put this away, so I pulled the key lid down, while she put the house music on for the night, but I didn't particularly feel like going to the bar to talk to her. I stayed where I was and watched from the shadows as more and more people filtered into the place. I might've even dozed for a bit. It was so hard to get any real sleep when I had no faith that my traveling companions wouldn't kill me in my sleep. 

I was somewhere between sleep and being quasi-alert with my head tucked into my arm on the piano when I heard my name. I blinked, unsure if I'd actually heard it, or if it'd been a dream. When I lifted my head, I blinked again, and saw him on the ground standing next to the stage. My first impulse was to get to my feet, which I did, but then doubts started flying into my head. _Does he hate me? Can we fix it? Will we ever be friends again?_ I think my apprehension at the sight of Damon left me glued to my spot, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on him, because he went from standing where he was to holding me in his arms faster than he should have. Somebody could've seen him move at vampire speed, and nobody was drunk enough yet to not think anything of it. I returned his embrace and closed my eyes, so I could savor this while it lasted. It felt like the wind had been sucked out of me, but I still managed to murmur, "You don't hate me?"

Resting his hand on the back of my head with a slight sigh of relief, he answered, "Never," and I just had to remind him of what I'd actually done. 

"I shot you." 

He breathed out a barely audible chuckle. "Yes, you did . . . And I did the same thing when the situation was reversed."

Yeah, I guess he had even though paying him back for knocking me out hadn't entered my mind once when I did it to him. "And I knocked out Elena."

"Yeah, you did that too."

"And I gave him your brother."

"No other option with your sister there."

"I didn't know she was."

"Doesn't matter. You did what you had to do in the moment to stay alive. He would've killed you before I could've stopped him if you didn't come up with something to give him, and then he still would've ripped the house apart until he got to Stefan."

"You've had a lot of time to think about it, haven't you?"

I felt his chest heave again in another quiet laugh before he held me a little tighter and said, "Too much . . . come home, Eve."

My eyes teared up as I said, "I don't know how."

"Just leave with me tonight."

"But if I leave - "

"Let me worry about me and Stefan. It's not your responsibility to sacrifice yourself for us . . . Why does Klaus want you?"

"Well, as far a I know, I'm just his driver, but I suspect there's more."

"Like?"

"I don't know. I feel like he's playing some kind of game."

"And Stefan?" 

"Klaus wants a brother. Your's does not hold back on how much he hates him, but Klaus still thinks Stefan is his only friend, and they were both here in the 20s. Gloria seems to know both of them, and she didn't seem surprised to see them together . . . I think Stefan was upset by a picture he found behind the bar before they left . . . My guess with the way that Klaus has been talking about Chicago in the 20s is that they knew each other then and were maybe even good friends, but Stefan doesn't remember it, and Klaus desperately wants that back."

"Why wouldn't he remember?"

"I don't know. It could be chalked up to that decade being a drunken-vampire haze for Stefan, but to block it out that completely, I'm thinking - "

"He was compelled to forget."

"Yeah."

"I brought Elena. If he sees her, then - "

"Stefan still won't leave."

"Is he compelled to stay?"

"No."

"Has he flipped his switch?"

I pulled back to look up at him. "No, but how do you know that? I thought you thought he did."

"He was way too concerned about what was going to happen to Elena when Klaus came a knocking for him to have his humanity off."

Biting the inside of my cheek, I considered that before nodding. "He may not have flipped his switch, but it may have been better if he had. Klaus is going to figure out why his hybrids aren't working, and the closer he gets to the solution, the more desperate Stefan gets to keep him from finding out that Elena's alive."

"How desperate?"

"Very."

"I need examples if - "

"I feel like he's more of a threat to me than Klaus is."

There was no emotion to his voice as he asked, "Still?" 

"He has been the whole time. The day we left, Klaus found a werewolf pack . . . His hybrids failed. It was a complete disaster . . . 10x worse than when a vampire is bitten by a werewolf and at a much faster rate. Klaus had to kill them all, so you can imagine he wasn't in a very good mood, and the first thing Stefan did was indicate that maybe Klaus had gotten the wrong twin in his ritual, but Klaus didn't agree. Since then, Stefan's been pushing me more and more, and I can't figure out why. He is really hard to get a read on. He's good. He's bad. He's up. He's down. He's a terrible liar one second and a master the next. He pushes his luck with Klaus, but I am convinced that the only reason he hasn't actually tried to kill me yet is because Klaus won't let him."

"Have you been playing nice?"

I opened my mouth to say I had and then sighed before saying, "Mostly . . . I did shoot him in the head a couple of times."

Trying not to laugh, he asked, "Why?" and I answered, "I just did it . . . He was going to kill a little girl, and I watched him kill her Mom without doing anything, but I just - I had enough. I'd only been with them a couple of days, but they were completely out of control."

His humor was gone. He looked concerned. "And since then?"

"It's hit and miss . . . depends on the day and Klaus's mood. Sometimes it's the same as it was those few days. Most of the time, he at least picks more difficult targets, or occasionally, he attempts to get them to go a day without blood, so they can partake in the finer things in life. Your brother really hates those days and blames them entirely on me."

"Have you gotten in his way again?"

"I keep an eye on him, but . . . no." I bit my bottom lip before admitting, "I'm not really sure what it is I should be doing. I feel like I should be stopping them, but if I do - "

"They'll kill you if you do it too many times."

I nodded before saying, "And if I'm dead, I can't keep my promise to you. I did say I'd do whatever it took to come back." The corner of his mouth turned up into a sad smile, because he knew that wasn't the only reason. Taking a short breath, I said, "If I die, then who will eventually stop them? I have to be alive if that's going to be me . . . I just can't do anything if I'm standing right next to them, because it's impossible to hunt someone that way. I'm not stronger than them, and I'm not faster than them, so it's going to take the element of surprise to pull anything over on Klaus, and I think Klaus knows that, which is why he has me in his sights at all times. This is the most I've been left alone since I've been with them, and I'm sure it's because his witch is here. And in the meantime, they're still killing . . . maybe not as much as they were, but they are, and I have no idea what to do. I just . . . I feel like I'm being complicit, like that saying about evil triumphing when good men do nothing . . . I'm doing nothing."

"Have either of them hurt you?"

I could honestly say they hadn't. "No, but Stefan wants to and until last night I was ignoring it, but he's getting more and more confrontational with every day that I'm with them, and ignoring him might have been the best way to handle it at first, because it made him look bad, but I can't ignore him stepping into my space and looming over me, like he's going to try something. I have to keep him in check, because the second Klaus stops seeing me as a Little Wolf-Killer, I'm done, and maybe Stefan is too . . . It's like I still have to live up to what I said I did to Stefan when Stefan came home even though what I told Klaus was the truth, because if Klaus suspects otherwise, then he'll kill us both . . . Klaus doesn't want to be lonely, but he doesn't trust anyone, so depending on his mood, which changes even more than Stefan's, it could go bad in a second if he thinks someone has betrayed him. I mean that is the entire reason why he has to steal other peoples' brothers instead of still having his own." 

"But you think Stefan's more of a threat to you?"

I sighed. "Well, on the plus side, I strongly suspect that he thought I was wearing my ring the night of the party, but yeah . . . erratic and desperate trumps paranoid and ill-tempered. Both are unpredictable, but Klaus is a little less so. You can see the cues that let you know when to take cover with him. He explodes, and then he's fine. Stefan's desperation is mounting, and he isn't built like you or Klaus. He doesn't go hot. He goes cold, so there is no way for him to relieve that stress . . . unless he's on the hunt, but as soon as he feeds it's over, and he has no self-control when it comes to that, so the hunts don't take long."

A look of understanding crossed Damon's face as he said, "Except for this one. He's hunting you." I hadn't really thought of it like that, but it was possible. It made more sense than him testing me to see what I said about Elena. 

I shrugged a shoulder. "Maybe . . . He also said he's being a dick to me because I'm alive and Elena isn't, so maybe he's going overboard with it?"

Looking pensive, Damon shook his head. "Maybe there's a part of him that believes that'll work, and maybe at first he thought it would be safer for you if he made it clear that you and he were not friends . . . If Klaus is paranoid, then the last thing he'd want is you two getting along, because that might mean that you'd try to take him down together . . . but now? The blood's got my brother's brain so scrambled, he's actually convinced himself he means it, and you are his target, the one he really wants but can't have if Klaus won't let him. The urge to kill you is only going to get worse until that's all he can think about doing."

That didn't really worry me as much as it seemed to worry him. I guess I'd just gotten used to the idea that Stefan wanted to hurt me. He could, but I wasn't going to let him kill me. I could see that Damon's last statement didn't particularly make him happy, so I tried to put his mind at ease. "But it hasn't all been bad, like there is a lockup in this city, the contents of which I would love to get my hands on, and I also know the weaknesses all future hybrids will have if he gets his way . . . wolfsbane and vervain. Taking their heads and hearts kills them . . . They're not that special . . . certainly nothing to die trying to prevent."

The tension in his shoulders relaxed. "Not the apocalypse you thought you were dying to stop?" I shook my head, and he smiled, like it validated him keeping me out of the ritual. Never one to pass up an opportunity, he asked, "What's in the lock up," a few seconds later.

"I have no idea, but it's important to him."

"Can you give me the address?"

"Yep. As long as you promise that if you take something, you'll make sure everything looks exactly the same as it did when you walked in there. If anything is even moved a centimeter, he'll notice, and we may need the bargaining chip for another time, so he can't suspect a thing until we use it, or it won't be as effective. He'll just come after us to get it back, and he'll turn it into a war we can't win yet. What we want to do is take him by surprise, especially if he's going to find out from Gloria that Elena's still alive and will show up in Mystic Falls anyway. We can start planning for that now." 

With a grin, he pulled me to his chest again in a bear hug as he said, "God, I've missed you. They're coming back here tonight?"

"Yeah. Gloria told them to leave me with the piano for a while. They're here to see her for help on the hybrid problem, and they haven't gotten it yet, so they'll be back for that."

"I promise I will get you out of here tonight. Until then, I need you to go along like nothing's different and distract Klaus . . . I'm coming for you before I try for Stefan."


	12. Killing Time

I doubted that Damon himself had known what he would do tonight when I saw him earlier, so there's no way that I knew what he was planning, but I knew why he wanted to get me first. He might hope that Elena talking to Stefan would work, but he took what I said about his brother seriously. If Stefan didn't leave after Elena talked to him, then Stefan couldn't interfere with Damon extracting me if I was already out. 

I looked around the club. It wasn't exactly full, but there were enough people around to blend in if I could just get away from the Original sitting next to me at the bar, and the Doll Maker on the other side of him before the Original sister apparently joined the three of us. My focus was on the stage, while I waited for my opportunity. The house music was dull, but I suppose it provided background noise that made this place seem livelier than it actually was. It was a little sad. I bet this place used to be packed and had class, but now it was just bland. "Penny for your thoughts."

I glanced at Klaus. "You're nostalgic for this place, so I'm sure you see it differently than I do. You see what was. I see what is . . . You left, but Gloria's stayed here all along, which means she's poured her extended life into it, and look at what that's yielded. Poor music and a room that's only half full of people. That's about it. It's sad . . . Bet you've seen that a lot over the years."

"More times than I care to remember." Pushing a glass in my direction, he added, "You're much too serious tonight. Drink. Have fun." Following my gaze to the piano at the back of the stage, he said, "I meant to tell you that you play beautifully."

"I started learning the day I turned 2. If you enjoy something and do it for that long, you'll be okay at it."

"So, if a compliment isn't what you seek, then you play for you, and nobody else." 

I looked at him in slight confusion. "I've never once wanted a compliment for it. That'd be like expecting to be complimented for breathing. Sometimes it's the only way I can think to communicate with others if they care to listen to what I'm saying, but most of the time, I don't really think about it. I just know it helps me clear my head."

"For me, it's art."

"Creating or observing?"

"Creating." 

My head tilted to the side, while I studied him, and then my eyes landed on his forehead as I said, "I would love to see what kind of art that mind creates when nobody is at the helm."

"There is always someone at the helm."

"No." My eyes narrowed thoughtfully before I said, "Not always if you truly submerge yourself in the experience of letting your hands create whatever they need to create to express what it is you're feeling or thinking and can't quite work out through conventional means."

Was that a Klaus caught off guard look? I'd been nailing my ability to get those the last couple of days. Quickly recovering with a charming smile, he said, "As I said, for me it's art, but music is something you have in common with Elijah." 

The corner of my mouth curled up as I said, "I heard him play once. It was _Tiny Dancer_ , which surprised me a little, and he said you have to go contemporary if you want good tips."

It would appear that I'd grabbed Klaus's full attention as he swung towards me and said, "That's right. You did meet Elijah, didn't you? Tell me what you thought of my brother."

I smiled before joking, "I liked him until I met you and found out just how much he insulted me by comparing you and I."

Thankfully, he grinned before exhaling a genuine laugh. "See, Stefan, I told you she could be charming when she wants to be." 

"And I told you - " 

Klaus raised his hand to silence him without actually looking away from me and said, "Why did he compare us?"

"He was determined to follow me around and keep me from doing whatever I wanted. I told him I didn't need him to babysit me, and that he was going to cramp my style. Then I called him a buzz kill." 

His whole face lit up at that. "He is a total buzz kill, isn't he?" Leaning forward he asked, "What did he want to interfere with you doing?"

"What do you think?"

His smile fell somewhat. "He didn't want you in the sacrifice, because it wouldn't have worked for him if his intention was to kill me."

My eyebrows knitted together, as I gave my head a slight shake, and I was as earnest as a truthful person could be as I said, "I knew he wouldn't go through with it. I was so sure, I bet someone's life on it."

Watching me in interest, he asked, "What made you so certain?"

I knew from what Katherine had told Damon that Elijah was in another time out, one his brother had decided to give him, but I thought Klaus should know his brother didn't really hate him enough to kill him. "As far as he knew, you're all he had left. He could be furious with you, feel betrayed, and all the rest that goes along with the belief that you are the reason he lost the rest of his family forever, but at the end of the day, you are still his brother. I knew that to him, you must be the only one who truly understands what it is to be alive for that long, but more than that, you're the only one who knew him when he was human and who grew up with him. Nobody else could ever replace that. Without you, he'd be alone, and I was willing to bet that you guys need each other more now than you ever did when you were alive, because to be 1000 years old must be difficult enough, but to be 1000 years old and alone? He wouldn't have gone through with it."

Klaus swallowed before taking a slow breath and then sat back marginally. This is what I meant by him caring too much. I'd hit too close to home for him in what I'd said, and he quickly changed the subject. "And now for the plan . . . I have to know how would you have outsmarted me if you thought him stopping you would have ruined your buzz. You must've considered it to be your _pièce de résistance_ of quite a short life."

One of my eyebrows ticked up as I said, "And risk bringing that anger of yours down on me? I don't think so."

"Come on, tell me. What was my protégé planning?" Protégé ? What the hell was he talking about? I guess he had been pushing me lately to use my brain more, almost like he was mentoring me on how to kill him, because he knew I couldn't, and it amused him, but protégé? My eyes narrowed slightly in thought, while I considered how much to tell him, and he smirked before saying, "No holding back. I want all the details." He had been studying me way too much, just the way I'd been studying him.

Licking my bottom lip, I said, "I'd rather play a game."

"A game? Now there is an idea. What do you have in mind?"

"Well, I'm the bad guy, and you're the good one for starters." He seemed intrigued, so I said, "We'll keep the first round short . . . 5 people, and since I don't know you, you have to tell me your targets, and - "

"What if you did?"

"Know you?" He nodded, and I said, "Then, I'd know you well enough to figure out who you'll pick, so you wouldn't have to tell me."

Seeing where I was going with this, he said, "So, it's a getting to know you game."

"Of sorts, and there are only two rules. Gloria can't find out, and you can't use your super human speed to get to your targets before me."

"What do I do when I get to them?"

"Try to compel them to do something good with their lives before I can stop you."

"And if I think what would be good for their lives is that they should jump off the nearest bridge?"

"Well, it wouldn't make me the bad guy if I stopped you from doing that. I'm supposed to rob them of their dreams, and you're supposed to provide them. That's how it works."

He laughed and looked over his shoulder at a Stefan who didn't give him the jovial response he wanted. Looking back at me, he said, "What if their dream is to become a serial killer?"

"Well, then I'd better get to them before you can compel them." 

"What do you do to prevent me from compelling them?"

"Whatever I have to do."

Looking over his shoulder at Stefan again, he said, "What do you say, Ripper? Are you in?"

Stefan did not seem so inclined, and maybe that was a good thing. If Stefan played, he might start killing people to keep Klaus from compelling them, or he wouldn't, because if he did that, then Gloria would know about the game. Compelling people to leave and jump off a bridge would yield the same results as if he ripped into them, but he would be able to do that without her knowing, and even if he didn't go that low, he wouldn't do anything good. He might at first, like he might just compel them not to listen to Klaus, but as the night wore on, I was sure he'd slip further and further into the ripper mentality. 

It would make it easier for Damon to get me out of here if they were both playing. Was it wrong for me to use both Stefan and the people in this bar to make that happen? Absolutely. Could I stop it now that I'd gotten the ball rolling? Probably not, especially since Klaus didn't appear to want to take 'no' for an answer from Stefan, so I might as well roll with it. At least now, I had a way to extricate myself from their company, regroup with Damon in Mystic Falls, and he and I could figure out what to do about them together. I couldn't do this alone anymore. 

To goad Stefan a little, I asked, "Who's team would he be on?"

"Yours of course. I wouldn't want to discourage you from playing by making you compete against two who can compel when you can't. The game would be over before it's begun."

Drumming my fingers on the bar, I appraised him before saying, "Why do I get the feeling that I'm really getting kicked out of my own game, and you're trying to put a positive spin on it?"

Leaning towards me, Klaus asked, "And why do I get the feeling you don't want him on your team?"

"Because I don't. I'll still be competing against both of you if I don't want him to get all the points."

It was quick. It was blunt. It was partially true. It was enough to make Klaus's eyes widened in amusement, as he quickly came to the belief that my conscience wasn't getting the better of me with regards to Stefan playing and people possibly dying. I just wanted my fair share of points. "Ah, but his points are your points, Little Wolf-Killer. That's what being on a team means."

"I don't do teams." 

"One of the best lessons you can learn is how to be on a team with people you don't trust as long as you ultimately reach your goal."

Yeah, I used to think that when I first met Damon. He kind of screwed that all up by becoming my friend and stomping my goal into dust. Klaus seemed sincere in his advice, and I looked speculatively at Stefan. "Yeah, but then once you reach it, you have to keep them from running off with your trophy." 

"Stefan isn't going to run off with anything, are you Stefan?" 

He looked over at Stefan, and Stefan rolled his eyes. "I'm not playing."

"Sure you are, and I'm adding a new rule. It just wouldn't do to have one teammate attacking the other, would it?" Stefan threw him a glare and opened his mouth to respond, but Klaus looked back at me to say. "So, Eve, play nice."

It caught me off guard, and I did a poor job of concealing my laugh with a cough. "Me?"

"You're the one who wants to win more, and I'd just hate to see what would happen if he gets in your way."

My eyes flitted back and forth between the two of them, and I finally stood with a sigh. "Whatever. If it keeps him from getting his kicks hunting me with your tacit approval, I'm all for it." 

"You honestly believe I would condone - "

I cut Klaus off by saying, "I think you would do anything to get the friend you knew back, and this game is a pretty good way of testing how far he's come, which is why you want him to play." _So heads up, Stefan. If you didn't know it until now, he's got certain expectations for you. Call it a test of loyalty._

With a chuckle that did the opposite of deny what I'd said, Klaus got to his feet saying, "And now for my 5."

He pointed his targets out, and there didn't seem to be a particular type he was shooting for right now, just their spacing around the room. They were at opposite ends and corners. The pattern was essentially like the 5 on a cube of dice. He wasn't just going to go from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5, and he wouldn't do it in reverse number count either. This was about their location. Furthest to nearest or nearest to furthest, it didn't matter. I was willing to lose one or two if it meant I could get to the other 3 and still ultimately come out on top, which meant that I was going to start with the girl in the middle. 

I took a step, and realized Klaus took a step in her direction at the same time. I looked up at him, as he looked down at me and smirked. "I am really starting to see the appeal of this game. If the strategy is lose 2 to gain 3 . . . What do you do if your opponent is of the same mind? That's where tactics come in . . . Bravo, Little Wolf-Killer." Looking back at Stefan, who still hadn't moved from his seat, he added, "Sit this round out, but the round after that, you're working with her whether you want to or not." 

His attention came back to me, and his eyebrows rose expectantly as he tilted his head in his intended victim's direction, like 'shall we?' _Sure. I actually wouldn't mind seeing how this turns out._ I shrugged a shoulder, and rather than make a bee-line for the girl in the middle the way I'd originally intended, I looped out away from her, so I could approach her from the side, while he took the more direct approach. I just had to time it so that I got to her a millisecond before he did and pay attention to what the girls surrounding her called her before I got there. 

Then I was turning on a bubbly-enthusiastic demeanor as I shrieked, "Oh my God, Casey, is that you?!" while I threw my arms round her in a giant hug, surreptitiously jabbed her in the shoulder with a vervain dart I had hidden up my sleeve, and immediately released her saying, "I haven't seen you since . . . was it camp when we were - "

"14? Yeah . . . Yeah, that was a great summer. How have you been?" She had no idea who I was, and it was so apparent, but it was so easy to get people to think they knew you and had just forgotten. To make up for forgetting you, they always let you get by with just a little bit more than they would an absolute stranger. 

Turning to look behind me, I said, "Well, you know . . . good. You have to meet my friend, Nik." He was already on his way somewhere else. I don't know if he knew what I'd done, or if he just didn't want to waste time on someone I'd gotten to first, but if I tied him up just a little with the prospect of a potential point, I could get to another intended victim before he did. 

As he turned, he threw a look at me to let me know he knew what I was thinking, and then he took her hand with a charming smile to make his introductions. It wouldn't take him long to figure out she couldn't be compelled, or that I literally had a trick up my sleeve to keep all of his targets from being compelled if I got to them first, so I was off through the crowd as quickly as I'd approached her, but I didn't go the way he'd been heading. I went in the opposite direction. Jabbing them with darts was, in this instance, the lightest shade of gray I could be. It was fast, efficient, and it meant I was most likely saving their lives, because he was going to do something to make me pay for any point I lost. I just knew it.

I jumped into dancing with a group of people, so I could get to the next target, felt no regrets in jabbing him when he got a little too familiar for my liking, and then jumped back out of dancing, so I could make my way to a third target. That's when two girls came up to block my path with their arms crossed over their chest. I went to go around them, and they side-stepped in front of me. My eyes narrowed, and I looked across the room to find Klaus smirking at me. He was walking from the direction of target 4 and just getting to target 1 at the back, so that really meant that it was a race to get to the final target, and he was compelling other people to block me.

It's something Damon did too, but he'd only done it once, because I'd started a bar room brawl, and at first he'd thought it was hilarious, but then he came a little too close to killing people when he felt like he had to step in to protect me, which was still fun for him, but not the good kind of fun . . . which was probably true of the kind of fun I was having fighting. He thought it was better for me if he didn't do that again. I thought it was better for him if he didn't do it again. We agreed that he wouldn't do it again . . . but maybe he could if I put a rule in place that said no fighting. At the time, I hadn't thought I'd be able to do it even if it was a rule, but maybe I'd been wrong. If I could get through with this without fighting, then maybe we could do it again. It did make it more interesting. 

I went to go around the girls again. Another side-step, and then I just pushed right through the middle of them. One grabbed my arm, and I automatically twisted out of her grip before giving her harsh shove to make her take a step back and ducked before the other girl could retaliate. Her arms grabbed around thin air, as I dodged behind her, and used her forward momentum to push her into the other girl before zipping through another dancing group that blocked them from following me.

I could see Klaus getting closer and picked up my speed, but he didn't. I guess he didn't have to move faster if he could make people do it for him. There appeared to be two more people standing between me and the target now. Guys. Similar bouncer stance to the girls, except they were pretty tall. Hm. Mindful of the two girls who were most likely still behind me, I glanced over my shoulder, saw the girls making their way through the crowd, and took a step back before sprinting towards the two men in front of me and rather than go over, around, or through, I went under, slid between the tallest ones legs and got back on my feet to keep going without knocking anyone down on the other side of the guy. 

I was almost there when someone stuck their foot out to trip me, and I landed at the male target's feet. He looked down at me, and I sheepishly waved just before Klaus got to him and took his attention off of me by putting his hand on his shoulder. I quickly reached forward to stab the guy in the leg, but somebody grabbed ahold of my ankle and pulled me away from them. Fuck. 

My immediate reaction was to flip over onto my back, ready for a fight, but before I could kick the guy in the knee as hard as I could, someone picked me up by the collar and put me on my feet saying, "Now, what would Gloria say if she saw you hurting these fine patrons?"

 _Sorry, Damon. I think that's still a no-go._ "Get out of my club?"

Looking over my head at the 5 people he'd set loose on me, Klaus said, "You lot can carry on with your nights," before saying to me, "What lesson have we learned from all of this?"

"Don't wave. Just stab."

Laughing what was probably one his more genuine laughs, Klaus said, "Well, that's a given . . . What else?"

"Don't make a rule that makes it twice as hard to win."

"You know that the harder it is, the more fun you have, and the sweeter the victory when it's earned . . . but you need a team."

Sighing, I said, "Your team was compelled."

"And now you have someone on your team that can do the same thing."

"This is not going to go well. No need to divide and conquer. Stefan and I are already divided."

"Well, then I'll continue winning all night."

_Let's hope not. My real team could use a win._


	13. Gone In an Instant

This was going better than I'd expected. We'd upped the number to 9 in the second round and 13 in the next. I had no idea what these people were being compelled to do. I just knew that the three of us were totally absorbed in the game, and I was probably having more fun than I should be having. We were spread out around the room in a giant triangle, and there was a bit of a stand off going on with the last target. Stefan looked in my direction and gave me a little nod, I started moving to my right, but was stopped a few feet away when some guy, smiling like the Cheshire cat bumped into me. I'd been bumping into people all night, but the look on his face creeped me out. "Move."

"Care to dance?"

"What? No."

Leaning towards me, he said, "You're gonna wish you had."

I looked down at my thigh where I'd felt a slight sting and then back up at the guy as he turned and walked away. Sure I'd been doing that to people all night, but did he just? I looked in confusion at Stefan who seemed to have started making his way over to me, and then it started to feel like the room was spinning. Should've put a rule in about attacking the other team too. I'm pretty sure the accusatory look I threw Klaus's way let him know that I fully blamed him for this as my legs started to give out from under me. As I fell, I tried to reach out for something to hold onto and someone grabbed my arm, but that's all I remember.

_'I've left bodies scattered from Florida to Tennessee. Innocent people. Humans.'_

Stefan? My hearing returned before anything else did. I just couldn't open my eyes.

_'Lexi found you like this before in the 20s, and she saved you.'_

Who was that? I tried opening my eyes again with little success.

_'And do you know what I did after that? I spent 30 years trying to pull myself together. To a vampire, that's nothing. To you, that's half your life.'_

I tried to move, and I may have tried to say something. What that was, I didn't know, but a hand quickly clamped down over my mouth, which made me put a little more effort into opening my eyes. When I did, everything seemed blurry and a little out of focus until it wasn't. Damon? He put his finger up in front of his lips to indicate I should be quiet, and I nodded. I didn't know what what was happening, but I could be quiet.

He took his hand away, and I tilted my head in the direction of the voices coming from the end of the alley. _"I don't want to see you. I don't want to be with you . . . I just want you to go."_ I waited for what felt like an eternity, but that was probably only about 30 seconds, and then Damon was picking me up to take me in the direction of where the voices had been.

"Are you okay?"

I looked from Damon to where he was looking when he said that and saw my reflection standing there. _Is that who was talking with Stefan? How'd that happen? Why isn't it in a mirror? Is that what I sound like?_ When we got to my runaway reflection, I reached an arm out in her direction, and poked her in the shoulder to see if my hand went through, but she was solid. My eyes widened. _Am I the reflection?_

I looked up at Damon, and he was watching me. "'M I real?" 

He smiled. _Oh, that was a beautiful smile._ "Yeah, you're real."

"She?"

"Well if she isn't, who do you think she is?"

"Flection."

Damon laughed, and it made me smile as he said, "You think she's your reflection?"

While I nodded, I heard my reflection say, "What'd you do to her?"

My head snapped in my reflection's direction, and I heard Damon say, " _I_ didn't do this."

"Maybe not, but you did get whatever it is she's on."

Pointing at my reflection, I tried to sound stern as I said, "No. Bad, 'flection," and Damon laughed again.

"Why is she bad, Evie?"

"Saved me."

"That's right, I did save you, didn't I?" I nodded, and Damon said, "What if I said that was Elena, not your reflection?"

I rolled my head to look back up at him. That's right. He did say he'd brought her, didn't he? I sighed in frustration at my inability to think or speak and then rested my head drowsily on Damon's shoulder. "Drugged me . . . again."

"It wasn't totally my idea."

"Lena?"

He exhaled a laugh before walking towards his car. "No . . . I found out what he's hiding in that storage locker, and his sister was all too happy to take one of her brother's toys away if it meant getting back at him for the 90 or so years he's had her in a coffin."

My fluttered closed. "Hm . . . kicked your ass . . . didn't she?"

"Little bit."

"Thought fast."

"I did."

"Stefan?"

"He got sent out to look for you, while Klaus and his sister were reunited, and it gave Elena her shot."

"No good."

"Nope."

I don't know when my eyes opened, but they must have at some point, because I could see Elena when I said, "He didn't mean it."

Damon took a deep breath. "Maybe. Maybe not. He ended it either way."

My eyes went to him "Have another shot."

Looking at Elena over his shoulder, like he was concerned about getting her hopes up, he said to me, "You're sure they're coming?"

"Yeah . . . need to prepare."

Opening his car door and putting me in the back much easier than a human could, he made sure I was lying down comfortably before he leaned over me and said, "There's time for that. Right now you need to sleep. Doesn't look like you have for weeks."

Closing my eyes again, I disagreed, "Slept earlier."

"Yeah, a power nap on a piano doesn't count."

"Does."

"Do you even know why you're arguing with me right now?"

I shook my head and felt him brush my hair back behind my ear. Whatever he did or didn't say after that, I didn't hear. I was out, and I don't think it was all down to the sedative. I hadn't been given as much as the last time, or I wouldn't have woken up when I did. Maybe I was just mentally exhausted and finally felt like I could sleep, because I was safe for the first time since I'd left.

\--------

I sat up with a gasp hours later, not knowing or caring where I was or what was happening, because I only had one thing on my mind now that it'd finally come to the surface. "My car!"

Damon leaned into Elena, who was sitting in the passenger seat, and muttered, "You're sure you got all her weapons?" She nodded, and he looked back at me in the rearview mirror. "We had to leave it behind."

It's not as though I hadn't already figured that out, but there was just something about hearing it confirmed that made my eyes widen before I lunged forward to put him in a sleeper hold. The car swerved, but I didn't care, as I yelled, "Take me back. I have to go get it."

In a strangled voice, and doing a remarkable job of staying on the road, Damon exclaimed, "We're in West Virginia!"

I ignored Elena pulling on my arm and telling me to stop, while I yelled, "I don't care! You left it with them, Damon. You. Left. It. With. _Them_! Take me back!"

"He would've known . . . If we took it, he would've known."

My hold loosened somewhat. "Would've known what?"

"That you told me about the storage locker . . . It had to look like you were taken against your will. Why do you think I didn't show my face in there and had the sister do all the work? I didn't want any of this to fall back on you."

He couldn't seriously be that naive. "She's his sister. She isn't going to lie to him about - "

"There's a 50% chance he'll think you're dead. They're the best odds I've had for a while. I had to take them. What other choice did I have?!" There was unmistakable desperation in his voice, and it wasn't because he was concerned about us crashing or because he wanted me to believe him. It was the ordeal as a whole. My hold around him weakened until it became more of a hug, so I could tuck my head against his, and he said, "Ring or not, until I saw you today, I didn't even know if you were alive."

This wasn't all just about me. Klaus still had his brother, and that was weighing on him as well . . . but it was my car, the last thing I really had that reminded me of both of my parents working together for me, of time I'd spent with my Dad, of what little normality I'd been able to eke out of my existence with them. I mumbled, "But it's my car," and his hand came up to pat my arms as he said, "I know, and I will find a way to get it back for you, Evie, but you have to let it go for now."


	14. Across the Great Divide

Damon went to open the door, and I turned to get out of there, but was stopped when his hand reached out to grab my arm and pull me back. "There's not much time for you to start fixing that reputation of yours. Couple of days, and then you're on your own. You need people."

I responded, "Not these people," in a sing-song voice, and he didn't find it all that amusing. 

"They're your family. If you can't win them over - "

"And I can't."

"Then you're screwed, and I am going to have to change my number if I don't want calls from the school informing me you're in trouble every single day."

I looked up at him over my shoulder. "Wow. Your opinion of me couldn't get much lower, could it?"

He smirked. "Sure it could. Like if you don't get in there right now, it will plummet." I sighed, and he rolled his eyes before saying, "You've been on edge since you came back. What you need is something normal, and making dishes for a potluck with your sister is just about as normal as you can get. Besides, she needs us right now."

"Funny, I don't recall getting a phone call saying, 'Eve, come over and bring Damon with you. I just really need you guys right now.'" 

The look on my face had to have let him know that I thought he was full of it, but he didn't seem to care. "See . . . on edge." He opened the door and wrapped an arm around my waist to pick me up and carry me through it backwards. I couldn't help but laugh. "And look at that. Just being here is already making you better." 

After closing the door, he put me down, and I turned to look at him, while trying not to focus too much on my surroundings. "I've never been here before."

Leaning towards me, he whispered, "I know."

"I don't think I can - "

Elena came around a corner, but you could hear her before you saw her. "Hello? Is somebody there . . . Damon is that you? I told you I'm fine. I don't need - " She saw me, went, "Oh," and I quickly looked up at Damon. What was I supposed to do now that I'd been spotted? Especially since it would appear that just like I'd said we weren't expected. He might be tolerated here, but me? I was like a stranger, but worse, because my Dad had been in this house quite a few times over the years, and my sister grew up in this house in a happy, normal family, and - 

I went to leave again, and Damon's arm wrapped around my midsection to pull me back to his side again, while he said, "We're here to help. What are you making?"

Pointing her thumb towards another room, she said, "Uh . . . chili. I was just - "

Letting me go to start walking in that direction, Damon said, "Chili? You can't make chili. Everybody makes chili. Eve's going to make an angel food cake, because it's her favorite, aren't you, Eve?" 

Hugging the box of cake mix in my hand, I muttered, "I'm not really up to the standard of making one from scratch," while taking a hesitant step to follow them, but was stopped when I heard a voice at the top of the stairs whisper-yell my name. I looked up, and there was Jeremy. Damon stopped to check on me and then waved his hand in the direction of the stairs, like if my cousin wanted anything to do with me, it was a good thing, so I should go see what he wanted. 

The trudge up those stairs was the most uncomfortable one of my life. I tried not to look at any pictures on the wall as I climbed, and when I got to the top, I didn't know where to go, so I just kind of stood there until Jeremy came out of a room and waved me over. As soon as I stepped into what I assumed was his room, he shut the door behind him and said, "Anna's here." 

I immediately relaxed. Talking about the supernatural, I could handle. Any kind of heart-to-heart with a cousin I didn't know, I could not. I looked around, and he said, "She's to your right."

Okay, well, it still looked like empty space to me. I looked at him in confusion. "What exactly do you want me to do about it?"

"Just listen." He brought his hands up to the back of his head and began pacing, while he filled me in on what'd been going on with him, his newfound powers, and the problems he was having with at least one of his dead girlfriends. I mostly watched him go back and forth. When he stopped, he said, "Anyway, she told me to ask you."

"Ask me what?"

"If Vicki wanting my help to bring her back is a bad thing." He looked in another direction of the room and said, "Anna says that whenever Vicki is around, there is this dark energy, and that whatever I do, I can't let her in . . . it's a two-way street. She pushes from her side, I pull from mine, and that's how I can see her . . . I think she just wants you to verify that she's not lying."

"You know she's not." He looked at me, and I said, "We already talked about this. You trust her over Vicki . . . You have all along, but the last time I said it, you threw a fit, so why does she think - "

"She thinks I'm ready to listen now." He looked at the empty space on the other side of the room and said, "She says I wasn't, but after what happened with that window the other night, I am."

One of my eyebrows rose as I said, "She knows you pretty well, huh?" 

He smiled at the space near his bed and said, "Yeah, I guess she does." It was so obvious that he cared deeply for her. Seeing her like this wasn't going to make moving on very easy for him.

I looked in the general direction of where he was looking and said, "Well, for starters, hello, Anna . . . I remember you actually." Jeremy looked at me, and I shrugged. "I kept pretty tight surveillance on the comings and goings of this house before I moved into the boarding house . . . outside of school hours, because you guys were never here then, and I had my own schoolwork to do. Anyway, I remember her . . . Sorry my Dad killed you, especially since I don't think you were bad . . . just looking for your Mom." 

His gaze trailed across the room until it was approximately in front of me, and he said, "She really wants you to make sure I know how serious the situation with Vicki is."

Attempting to look at an invisible woman, I said, "Something tells me you already believe her, Jeremy, and she knows it. She really wants something else from me."

Jeremy watched her walk away from me saying, "In time."

"Still looking for your Mom, Anna?"

Jeremy looked from her to me saying, "We both want to know how you know that."

"Oh come on, she doesn't need me to tell you that Vicki with a dark magic battery boost strong enough to break windows this side of the divide is bad news, and she doesn't need me to tell you that Vicki saying that she can come back if you help her is bad either, especially since the consequences for you coming back after 20 minutes is that you get to see dead people for the rest of your life. That tells me that Anna wants something else . . . and if Anna were corporeal, and I said something to agitate her enough to make her walk up to me and say that she was here to talk about something everyone in the room already knows, I'd know she was the worst poker player in the world. She thinks I can help her find her Mom. I want to know why."

A flicker of surprise crossed his face as he watched her walk back over to me. "She thinks you're her best bet."

"Why?"

"You're the only one who would care enough to help her."

Looking from her approximate location to Jeremy and back again, I said, "Jeremy cares. Why - "

"She thinks I don't understand the way you do that Pearl wasn't just a vampire, she was her Mom. That means something to you, and she says you're smart and intuitive, so you can make connections that people who are good at one or the other don't . . . She wants to help us with the Vicki problem first though."

Rolling my eyes, I muttered, "No need for the unnecessary flattery. I'll look into it, but I'm not doing it because I expect your help with the Vicki situation. I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do." And maybe because it would be better if she found her Mom and left Jeremy alone.

"Yeah, she meant it that way. She didn't think you'd want payment for it. You're not the type."

I breathed out a uncomfortable laugh. Guess this is what it felt like to be spied on by a ghost. "And I'm not making any promises. It'll take a witch, a.k.a. his current girlfriend, to commune with your Mom, and I don't even know where any of your Mom's belongings are, but if I bring Jeremy with me to the farmhouse, I'm sure you can point something that she owned out to him . . . As for Vicki . . . How do you die knowing next to nothing about the supernatural, and then manage to find a way to come back? She's talked to somebody. Who - "

"Anna says she can't see anyone on the other side. It's just her."

"That she knows about . . . or maybe they're just people she doesn't know, so she doesn't converse with them the way she does you, and that makes her even more tied to the land of the living . . . But Vicki has talked to someone, and whoever that person is has dark magic to spare for Vicki's visits. You work it from that side, Anna. We'll work from this side."

I looked at Jeremy, and he watched her before nodding. "Yeah, she says she'll try."

"Okay." I gave a thumbs up before saying, "Good team talk . . . I'll give you two love-birds some space. I have an angel food cake mix to add water to downstairs," and then turned to leave. That wasn't weird at all. I almost bounded down the stairs, so I could get away from the weird factor of knowing that at least one vampire on the other side watched me enough to see how my mind worked and knew how much my own vampire Mom had meant to me. When I got to the kitchen, I kept on going and headed out the front door.

If anyone had seen me do that, they would've thought that was my plan all along, but always being on guard, so you're quick to react to any situation that presents itself does have it's advantages. The very last thing, and I mean the very last thing I wanted was to awkwardly interrupt another pair of star-crossed lovers in what appeared to be a pretty compromising position. If they hadn't kissed already they were about to and I really did not want to be there for that. Stupid Gilbert House of Love. All it really did was make me think of dying.

It's not as weird as it sounds when you take into account that on a whim after I almost died, Damon said he loved me. Then I left. Again, he thought there was a good chance I was dead, and it took him a month or less to move on to Elena . . . or back to Elena? Is that how this ridiculous situation had gone? It mostly made me think about how there's nobody who would really mourn me if I were gone. Before, when I used to think about being in the sacrifice, I knew my parents would grieve if I didn't go vampire the way Mom wanted, and that was enough, because they were all I knew, and if your whole world mourns you, then I suppose your life had some meaning. Now my parents were dead, and I was mourning them, but there was nobody really left to mourn me. 

Was that the sum of our existence, how many sit up and take notice when we're gone and how deeply that is felt by those who do? I guess not if you were a vampire. Apparently, they kept going in some weird alternate reality the way Anna did, or they did if they weren't at peace when they died, and let's face it. Most monsters aren't at peace when they're alive, let alone when they're dying, so most of them probably ended up where Anna was. Where did they go once that peace was found? Did they go where humans do, and where do humans go? 

I was halfway down the block when I heard someone call, "Hey, where are you going?"

 _Who knows? That's what I'm trying to figure out._ I only stopped because I knew the voice. "I, uh . . . to buy a pack of smokes."

Biting his bottom lip, Damon nodded before saying, "You smoke now?"

"Nope. What better time than the present to start?"

"You can't be a hunter and smoke. It's a dead give away on where you are, so you lose the element of surprise." 

Turning to continue on my way to nowhere in particular, I interrupted our little game by saying, "I know. I'm not actually going to buy cigarettes . . . I just remembered I have other things to do." Usually, we could go like that for a while with me coming up with more and more ridiculous things to say and him questioning me to try and catch me out. I don't know when we started doing it, but it was another one of our games, and I guess I just wasn't feeling it.

"Like what? Caroline's coming over here later, and I know you're not going to help set up the Lockwood's for this potluck, so - "

"Like not be in that house another second. Literally, anything is better than that . . . hot fire pokers, finger nails being ripped out with pliers, needles in the eye . . . anything." 

"Well, are you going to be doing that to somebody, or having it done to you, because - " I stopped when he was suddenly in front of me. "I'm pretty sure being on the receiving end would be worse than spending another second in that house." He was still trying, and he looked a little concerned when he saw I wasn't going to play along, but quickly masked it with a cocky grin. "Is somebody jealous?"

I just turned 18, and the romantic part of life was never something I thought I'd ever experience. I always expected to be dead and never saw much point in it, and the declaration that he'd made to me the night before I left . . . I wish he'd never said it, because I must've bought into it more than I'd thought. He'd said that he wasn't just waiting to find out how things turned out between Stefan and Elena, but if actions spoke louder than words, then what I'd seen spoke volumes. He wanted her first, so I guess it was only fair that she get him if it's what they both wanted now, and from what I could tell, it was. With a sigh, I ducked my head and said, "Go be happy, Damon. You deserve it. I'm - "

"Eve, it's not what it looked like." 

Why'd he sound worried? If he loved her, then he loved her. He didn't do anything wrong. His tone was almost enough to make me look up at him, but I didn't quite have all my walls in place, and I didn't want him to know exactly how hurt I'd been. I was a little surprised by it to be honest. Patting him on the chest to give him some kind of comfort for his distress, I walked past him saying, "I'll see you tonight. I have a Founder's Council meeting to attend, so I don't go to jail."

"Eve - "

Without stopping to look back at him, I said, "Your phone is ringing. You should probably get that. Might be important."


	15. Here's to First Steps

Well, this was a totally pointless council meeting to add to the others I'd attended. I'd wanted to bring up the Original family potentially being a problem for the town, but according to the three de facto leaders of the council, i.e. Liz, Damon, and Carol, that was a bad idea. The council was a wholly worthless entity that was full of people who had just a little more knowledge than the typical town person, but not much more, and the people on it would just freak and do something stupid if they knew what was really going on out there. "I have a question." 

I was in the sofa with my back to the door, so I didn't immediately see who'd said that. Liz said, "Bill," and that plus a look behind me didn't really get me any further in my knowledge of who that man was.

"Do you three think that everybody on the council is clueless or just stupid."

I immediately responded in a way that was strongly reminiscent of my father, "Trick question. The answer is both," and got his attention before Liz came up to put her hand on my shoulder.

"Eve, why don't you go downstairs? We'll deal with this."

"Who is he?"

She gave me that 'Mom look' she got sometimes before saying, "Just go downstairs, please."

"Why don't you want me to meet him? You think I'm going to do something - " My eyes widened in understanding. "He's Caroline's Dad." I'd heard what happened to her. Conditioning a vampire not to be a vampire was just crazy and had caused unnecessary harm to his daughter. Getting to my feet to get a better look at the man, I threw Damon one of the only looks I'd given him since that morning. "I thought you compelled him to leave town."

"I did!"

"Hm." I examined her Dad, while asking, "How'd you pull that one off if the vervain was out of your system?"

"Decades of training my mind - "

"Ah, so you think because you can pull off a neat trick of the mind, you can torture your daughter into doing something impossible? To not feed on blood would be to desiccate, and no, her mind wouldn't keep her body from doing that. Speaking of mind over matter, you know, I would love to see how that mind of yours works to stave off compulsion after you've been burned repeatedly by a flame thrower. I have one at home if you want to try - "

He looked around me at his ex-wife and said, "Really, Liz? You're allowing teenagers on the council now?"

"Eve." I looked at Liz, and she said, "You're not helping."

"Oh I'm not trying to help you guys make him think this council is legit. I want him to know the error in his logic. Mind over matter only works up to a point . . . a demonstration seems apt."

She sighed before looking over at Damon. "Would you mind - "

He threw his hands in the air and was quick to say, "Don't look at me. I think she has a point."

Putting her hand on my shoulder again, Liz tried, "He's Caroline's Dad."

I breathed out a slow breath before looking at her. "Yeah, my Dad had his moments too, and he chose dying over allowing Elena to become a vampire, but he was still my Dad, so I understand." Taking my Zippo out of my pocket, I flicked it open before saying, "Just a tiny demonstration?" 

She brought her hand to her forehead, while she mulled it over, and then shook her head. "No, I can't condone it." Throwing her ex-husband a look she said, "Although, I admit there is a part of me that would love to watch him burn for what he did to our daughter . . . How could you, Bill?"

"I did it for her."

"No." I shook my head and said, "You did it for you." 

Finally, Liz put her hands on my shoulders before turning me and directing me towards the door. "I'm sure Damon will fill you in later. Out."

Looking over my shoulder at her, I whispered, "If after your meeting, you change your mind, my offer still stands," and she chuckled. 

"I'm sure it does, Eve. Thank you for looking out for my daughter."

I muttered, "Not well enough if she still hasn't picked up any of the lessons I've been teaching her during our training sessions," and was met with a half-smile from Liz as she closed the door in my face. Well, now what I supposed to do? I should find Caroline. I had an idea.

I saw her downstairs and ignored the person standing next to her. It just felt easier to ignore Elena at this point than to actually make any sort of effort with her. That's how it'd been the rest of the car ride home from Chicago after I woke up, and it's how it would've been this morning if I'd stayed. Landing next to Caroline, I quickly let her know what was happening. "Heads up. Your Dad is here."

"Where?" 

She instantly started looking for him, like he was the monster hiding in her closet, and I said, "He's upstairs."

Leaning closer, she said, "I thought Damon - "

"He did. Apparently, your Dad takes this mind over matter philosophy seriously . . . Quick question. Would you be totally against it if I burned him with my lighter?"

"What?"

"I just think he should see what it's like to be burned and find out how strong his mind is at resisting."

Sighing she looked up the stairs before shaking her head. "He's still my Dad."

"Yeah, that's what your Mom said. She was tempted though . . . Anyway, I was thinking. How about a song?"

She gave me an uncertain smile. "Really?"

Turning to look towards the other room, I said, "The Lockwoods have a piano. I could play. You could sing and show him that you're still you."

"I was never brave enough before to do something like that."

"Hm . . . Or you could do it to prove to yourself that you're not afraid . . . of him . . . of losing his approval . . . of anything really. You keep coming out of these things stronger even though it doesn't feel like it right after they happen."

She started playing with her bracelet before looking at Elena to see what she thought, and Elena shrugged. "I say go for it if it makes you feel like you have more control over your life." 

Yeah pretty much that. I nodded in agreement, and Caroline smiled. "What'd you have in mind?"

"Uh, it's ambitious."

She laughed before saying, "You don't think I know it, do you?"

My eyebrows rose as I said, "Maybe not."

"But you think I can learn it."

"Yeah, I do . . . You up for it?" 

Taking my arm and heading towards one of the back rooms, she said, "Yeah. Let's do this."

We came back 30 minutes later. She was a little unsure, but the second she saw her Dad, she turned to run out of the room, and I grabbed her. "You need to do this. I'll be with you the entire way, and if it gets to be too much, let me know, and I'll play you out with the song we talked about." 

She bit her bottom lip and looked in her Dad's direction before nodding. "Okay. I'm just not sure about starting without you backing me."

"It's just a cappella for one verse, and it will draw people's attention, but there's hardly anyone here anymore."

"Easy for you to say, you're gong to be sitting back there the whole time."

"Well, I don't want to be a front woman, so . . . " I rolled my eyes at the obvious point that she did, and she took a deep breath before nodding again and pulling me with her over to the piano. I took my seat, and she stood in front before looking back at me. I played her first note and counted her down. She started off quietly, almost like she was hiding behind her phone with the lyrics on it.

_'Birds flying' high, you know how I feel.'_

She looked back at me again, and I nodded for her to keep going. She had the pitch right.

_'Sun in the sky, you know how I feel._  
_'Breeze griftin' on by, you know how I feel.'_

One more glance back, and she smiled before nodding to let me know she felt a little more confident as a few people started to take notice, and then her volume finally started to lift.

 _'It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me_  
_Yeah, it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me_  
_And I'm feelin' good.'_

I joined in with the piano for the rest of the Nina Simone song _Feeling Good_ , and Caroline killed it. I glanced at the stairs about half-way through and saw her Mom standing there with a hand over her mouth to hide her proud grin. Caroline may not be her Dad's little girl anymore, but she was her Mom's. Speaking of her Dad, he'd come to listen with everyone else left at the party, but he was standing there with a condescending smile, like it wasn't his daughter, and he wasn't impressed at what she was trying to do. Caroline absolutely saw it. There could be a massive crowd here, and he would've been the only one in the audience she wanted to reach. 

She may have faltered a bit the first time she looked at him, but then she picked it back up at the start of the second chorus and didn't drop it again. She hit that last note like a professional and then turned to look at me. I smiled before nodding towards the crowd, like she needed to take a bow, because they were all clapping for her, so she did. That's when she saw her Dad again, who was doing a slow clap, and then she quickly threw me a look to let me know she needed to get out of there, so I took it from there and started playing, _Sinnerman_ , another Nina Simone song, to take the attention off of her, while she left. Of course I also intended it to be a second message to her father.

I only played a 3 1/2-minute shortened version of the song, because to do the entire song justice, I knew I'd need more than just me to get the claps in the middle right, the same way I'd needed Rose to get the song we'd worked on together right. When I was done, I quickly got up, gave a half-hearted wave to the people clapping and walked out the front door, so I could breathe. I was a not a performer, and that was without a doubt the most people I'd ever played in front of in my life. It made me feel sick. "Hey." I looked over my shoulder and saw Elena. "It was nice of you to do that for Caroline."

 _Respond in kind. Be nice, Eve._ "Yeah, well, she's my friend, and I'm not a bad person."

"You lie."

 _Leave me alone._ I turned to walk down the stairs saying, "Mm. Not that much. I generally get in trouble for being too honest."

"You lied for months when you got here."

 _You can go now._ "Being alive without telling you doesn't mean I lied to you."

"No, you just lied to everyone you met when you were pretending to be me, and you had Damon lie for you too." 

_Probably would've apologized for that at some point if you hadn't smacked me in the face at Dad's funeral. Now hell will freeze over before I apologize for anything._

"He and Stefan already have enough problems without you getting between them."

_Ha! Do you even hear yourself right now?_

"Damon is already volatile without you screwing with his head and manipulating - "

 _Well, if ignoring her isn't going to work._ "How is it that I've become so 'bad' in your mind that you are shocked I'd do even one nice thing for Caroline? Everything I did was so I could save your life."

"I didn't ask you to do that. "

 _Why is she still following me?_ "Yeah, well, I didn't ask to be the one raised to do it, but it is what it is."

"You know, Damon told me how much you wanted to save my life, but if it was so important to you, why did you tell Damon, of all people, what you were planning to do if you didn't want him to stop you?"

 _Piss off, you annoying brat._ "Well, why the fuck did you let him know you were planning to hand yourself over to Klaus?"

"Because I wasn't expecting him to - "

"Well, then we were in the same boat, _sister_."

"I think you knew . . . if being there is what you really wanted, you wouldn't have chanced telling him what you were planning when you knew how badly he reacted the time you tried to kill Katherine." 

"Oh you mean the time you think Katherine and I teamed up so I could wrap him around my finger even tighter?" _Sorry Caroline. There's only one way I could know that. Hope it doesn't get you in trouble._

"Exactly . . . Just another manipulation in a con you've had going since you got here, and Damon is the one you've done it to the most. You found a way not to be in that sacrifice without making you look bad, and you used him to do it. You and Katherine made sure that Jenna was there instead of you. You used Stefan as bait to draw Klaus here, and then you took off with him the first chance you got. Big surprise when Katherine is the one who 'found' you in Chicago . . . You even have Damon believing he owes you for saving your life, so you can keep using him, and look at how well it's working. He brought you back here, and you are sure that Klaus is on his way here too, so when he does show up, I'm sure you'll use it to your advantage . . . I wouldn't be surprised if you're working with him too now. You've been playing all sides since you got here."

What do you say to all that? I guess Jenna was right. Elena wasn't going to believe anything I said now, and I understood from her perspective that she didn't really know anything about me, but to think I'd done all of those things? I mean I hadn't exactly defended myself or apologized. I'd just let it fester and build all summer, and apparently, this is where we were now. I still couldn't resist saying what I said next, and that was probably part of the problem. I just couldn't help my go-to self-defense mechanism, 'pushing people away.' "Katherine was right . . . You are an ingrate."

"You act as if I owe you something when I actually owe you nothing."

 _How about a fucking sister? Is that asking too much?_ I stopped walking and tried in the calmest manner I could to grit out, "Yeah . . . an entire life devoted to one thing, and I didn't do it." I turned to look at her in a quiet fury and steadily walked back towards her saying, "I wish I had, because then I would've never had to meet you and see what a monumental waste my life has actually been. Every moment of it has been devoted to you . . . I mean every single second . . . and then I meet you, and I get this?" I waved my hand in the direction of her body in disgust before stepping closer and saying, "I resented you, and I still do. It's not fair, but I'm human, not a saint, and I may have resented you . . . But I also stayed for you . . . On nights when I wanted nothing more than to run and get as far away from them as possible, I stayed, because my sister had no idea what was coming for her, but I did. It's all I've ever known. There was no light at the end of the tunnel for me even if I left, just darkness and misery, but she had a chance if I stayed and did things right . . . and I would've gone through with the intended ending without a second thought, because it's the only thing of any merit I was ever going to do . . . die for my sister and save people . . . that's it. You don't owe me a damn thing, but a sister that wasn't a self-righteous, self-absorbed, asshole would've been nice." Losing steam at what I'd just admitted to her, I muttered, "But I guess that would've been too much to ask."

I turned to leave again, and Elena said, "I don't see us as sisters though . . . I didn't even know about you until - "

"Elena, why don't you go inside?"

I stopped at the third voice that'd joined us. When did he get here? "I'm just trying to explain - "

"She doesn't need to hear it. She already knows. Go inside."

Rather than do what Damon said, she muttered, "I was just leaving anyway," before brushing past me, and I closed my eyes and turned my head in a direction that didn't involve having to see her. 

"Eve - "

"Don't." I didn't want to talk to him either. Especially if he was just going to give me a hard time for arguing with her again. I knew how this was going to turn out. I was scared of losing him. I couldn't let myself be with him in a way that reclassified our friendship because of it. It terrified me, and because of that I was going to lose him anyway. He was going to be with her, and because she hated me, I'd lose my friend, so he could make her happy. 

"Do you want to go try that fire thing with Bill?" It got my attention, because it caught me totally by surprise. Looking towards the house he said, "I've been thinking about it, and I'm sure that if you hold that lighter of yours under his hand long enough, he won't be able to concentrate on anything but that . . . I can compel him, and he'll go without causing more problems. Plus, we don't have to kill him, or go with an ironic twist where I turn him into the thing he hates most." I didn't say anything, and he ran his tongue along his bottom lip before raising his eyebrows in hope of a response, and it made him look boyish, uncertain, and very human while he added, "It's the lightest shade of gray I think I go on this one." 

Maybe it's the way he said it. Maybe it's what he hadn't said about whatever it was that he'd heard before we knew he was there. Maybe it was him using my philosophy on right and wrong, not just to get me to do the right thing the way he usually did, but for himself too. Whatever it was, something about it made me feel like maybe I was in way over my head already, because I did love him even if I wasn't ready for any of that. 

What the hell did I even know about love other than it was a really good way to leave yourself open to getting hurt by the person you loved, and that was just with my parents. I had no idea what it mean to love someone romantically. Is that what I felt or was it just that I loved him as a friend bordering on family? I suppose I wouldn't be tempted to kiss him right now if it weren't the first, and the hurt I'd felt this morning should've been my first clue that this had gone far beyond what I was willing to admit to even myself. 

I slowly nodded my consent, and he grinned before throwing an arm around my shoulders, so he could steer me back towards the house. "Good. Wait until I tell you some of the things he wants. For starters, he wants to put vervain in the town water supply."

"That's actually a good idea."

"No, it's a terrible idea."

Maybe it was for him. I ducked my head before shaking it with a small smile. "If Klaus and his sister show up here, then I'd feel a little bit better knowing that any faucet I turn on will give me some kind of weapon against them . . . imagine being able to use a fire hose on them if there's vervain in the water." 

Looking off in thought, he said, "I am, and I love it . . . but what are we going to do about compelling people who find out about the vampires in this town?"

"Same thing you do now with people who are on vervain. Lock them up until it's out of their system, and then compel them."

Rolling his eyes, he said, "Yeah, but that takes forever."

Well, I wasn't going to say he could kill them. "Here's a novel idea. Don't get caught."

"Point taken . . . and showers? What about - "

"The Boarding House's water has been filtered for vervain for decades."

"How is it you know that, and I don't? No wait, let me guess . . . the dossier you got on all of us before you got here, a dossier, I am sure Katherine helped create, so really it was made by the three most conniving, secretive, backstabbing - "

"Thorough?"

"Thorough people I have ever met." He sighed before looking down at me and relaxing. "I guess I've been getting my blood from hospitals out of town since your Dad showed up, so it doesn't really change that. If I get a strong urge to feed from the tap, I could always go with people visiting from out of town."

"True. So, it's settled?"

"Yeah, all right, I'll talk to Liz about it tomorrow . . . And Eve?" I looked up at him, and he said, "About this morning - "

I said, "I don't want to talk about it," at the same time he said, "I knew you were there," and it made me pause before my eyes narrowed into a slight glare as I turned my face away from him, and his arm slid off of it's perch on my shoulders.

"Great. So, you wanted to make sure I knew how fast you moved on after thinking I was dead . . . Good talk."

I could've thrown a fit and stormed off. I could've accused him of lying about what really happened. I could've done a lot of things to blow this friendship up beyond repair . . . I guess I had an opportunity to do that over just about anything every day, and I never took it. Neither did he.

When he didn't immediately respond, my eyes flicked up to him in uncertainty, and he finally said, "That's what you thought? That I moved on?"

Shrugging a shoulder, I answered, "Well, that and that I don't really have anyone to mourn me when I'm gone."

His eyebrows rose as he took that in and nodded. "So, I guess that's why I got more doom and gloom than the fire I was expecting."

Rolling my eyes, I shook my head. "Tell me you're not playing games, Damon."

"Hey, I said I'd wait as long as it takes, but I didn't say anything about not fighting dirty to speed the time line up a little."

"Oh yeah?"

He smirked in response to my challenge. "Yeah."

"Then know this. I will not be the Damon to your Katherine."

His shoulder's dropped, as he almost whined. "Oh come on, that's not fair. I am nothing like her."

Ignoring him, I said, "And I won't let Elena be that either. How could you do that to her? She looked like she meant it, and - "

"Well, I wasn't the one putting moves on her, I can tell you that much."

"No, you just let her do it. You know you're half the reason she hates me, right? I'm the big bad vampire hunter that's using you, and - " 

"Now that is a game I wouldn't mind playing with you."

It caught me totally unprepared. "I, uh . . . Are you being mildly suggestive right now, because - "

"Nothing mild about it."

"Stop it."

With a laugh, he threw his arm back around my shoulders and said, "Okay, well, then how about this? From the second I woke up in my cellar until the second I found you, I didn't stop looking . . . I went back to Memphis to see if I could pick the trail up there. Found a witch, but the pin Elijah gave you blocked her from finding you. Went from there to Mississippi to see a voodoo priestess . . . different kind of magic, same thing. Heard about a werewolf pack in Georgia and went there thinking that if Klaus needed werewolves, then I'd find him his damn werewolves and trade them for you. They really are impossible to find . . . Looked for a pack in Alabama and was on my way to check out a pack I heard was in the bayous of Louisiana when Katherine called. I came back here, and picked up Elena. I didn't move on. I was looking for you . . . And I swear that what happened this morning won't happen again."

"Sure it will. For a smart guy, you sure do make a lot of dumb decisions."

"I prefer to think I'm spontaneous."

"Reckless."

"Impetuous . . . just like you."


	16. The Last Place You Left Me

I'd planned to work on helping Anna find her Mom, but I had no real idea where to get started on researching something like that. Vampires who died just didn't come back to write down their tales, so who knew what was on the other side for them. I suppose I could have gone to one of my Mom's storage lockers with all of her research, but it seemed wrong to take Stefan's car to do it, and I had no idea how to drive a motorcycle. I wasn't going to steal a car the way I had the mayor's that one time. It wasn't exactly an emergency, and I couldn't just ask Damon to take me, because he was gone. 

When he and I got back to the boarding house last night, Katherine showed up and said she had a plan on what to do about Klaus, and off Damon went. I would've gone with them too, but since I was starting school on Monday, and they had no idea how long they'd be gone, Damon wanted me to stay. I guess that me getting the full 'human' experience was important to him now that I could, and missing out on the first few days of my first and last year of school were something he was decidedly against . . . well that and me hiding away in the boarding house for the rest of my life. It's like the only place I fit was with the supernatural contingent, and I wasn't supernatural, so I didn't really fit there either. I could live with what I had, but he wanted me to have better.

I wound up spending all morning learning how to play Lou Reed's _Perfect Day_. I think the first time I'd heard it was after my Mom's ban on all keyboards, and I might've snuck out occasionally to play when I knew she was preoccupied with something else and wouldn't catch me, but that really only gave me a chance to play a song or two that I already knew before I had to take off again, which meant that everything I played was something I'd already known before the ban. It wasn't an overly complicated song, but learning something new took some time. I think I had it down pretty well by mid-afternoon, and then decided that I wanted to try and learn how to play _Hallelujah_ by Leonard Cohen on the guitar, but chose Jeff Buckley's version to play. It'd take me a whole lot longer to learn that. I wouldn't be doing it in a day anyway, or a week . . . maybe a month if I took time off from learning it to write my own songs, which happened occasionally when the mood struck and always took a lot of time . . . and then of course there was also school. That'd definitely slow down my learning curve.

I was stumbling through the introduction when I got a call. My phone said it was from Caroline, and I briefly thought, 'Shit,' before answering. "Caroline, before you say anything - "

_"What'd you do to my Dad?! I just got done having lunch with him, a lunch he picked me up to have out of the blue, and all he did was talk about how glad he was that he came here to take me shopping for school clothes, because it means he got to see me perform last night. He said he always knew I was talented, and he's really proud of me now that I'm pursuing it more."_

I'd planned to tell her, but it'd slipped my mind. "I was going to tell you. We took another crack at it, and - 

_"Eve, what'd you do?"_

I tried to remind her of what was important. "He's fine."

_"Then why'd he have a bandage on his hand and tell me he burnt it on the stove?"_

Still staying away from the negative, I tried, "Do you have your Dad back?"

_"That's not the point. You - "_

"Does he hate what you are to the point that he'd sacrifice both of you for it."

_"He isn't your Dad! He's mine, and I told you to leave him alone. Whatever you and Damon did to him - "_

"Wasn't what you wanted and was borderline wrong, but at the same time, is it really any different than your Mom having Damon try to compel him into leaving?"

_"It's completely different. What'd you do when Katherine hurt your Dad?"_

I pulled the phone away from my ear to briefly give it a dirty look. I should've never introduced even a hint of my own Dad into this conversation. Putting the phone back against my ear, I said, "I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. She - "

_"Put him in the hospital, which is what you did to my Dad."_

"Uh, ER versus ICU doesn't really equal the same thing, and - " I cut myself off with a sigh. She didn't want me to justify it. "I'm sorry. He's a human, and I try not to hurt people, because it's wrong . . . Although, if you think you're up to blackmailing vampires, then you should expect to get hurt, and I'm getting really fed up with parents abusing and neglecting their children in the name of their own selfish interests and then saying that they do it for us. It isn't right, and all it does is hurt us and turn us into monsters. Tyler's Dad, your Dad, Damon and Stefan's - "

_"Eve - "_

"Okay, I'm just sorry."

_"You're really not."_

"I'm sorry I upset you. Does that count?"

_"Not really."_ She sighed before saying, _"I don't want to look at you right now, so I don't think you should come tonight."_

"Come to what?"

_"Senior prank night? Nevermind. You just stay home and do whatever it is you do."_

She hung up and I tossed my phone on the bed. Staring at it for a while, I thought about what happened last night. Her Dad had lasted a little longer than you'd expect, but not much, so it was more like a 2nd degree burn than a 3rd degree burn. There hadn't been any charring of the skin, but he did have a blister. Was it wrong? Yeah, probably. You shouldn't go out of your way to hurt people. He, however, had given Caroline 2nd and 3rd degree burns all over her arms, legs, and the back of her shoulders - pretty much anywhere that skin was exposed with the exception of her face - and that wasn't right just because she was a vampire, was it? 

Was anyone else going to do anything about it? No. You couldn't exactly turn him over to the authorities for child abuse. His ex-wife was the Sheriff, and unless she wanted to pin something else on him, she couldn't do anything about it if she was going to stay within the confines of the law. I was sure that the rules changed, however, when you were human and knowingly got involved in the supernatural. You play by their rules, not human rules, and her Dad knew that, because in what human setting was it acceptable to tie your daughter to a chair, starve her, and burn her repeatedly in an effort to keep her from wanting to eat, and yet that's exactly what he did, so he knew the rules were different when dealing with supernatural beings, and he was still arrogant enough to think he could threaten to out another known vampire without there being any repercussions. 

My Dad was similar in the way he'd approached Damon when he met him, but he'd also understood the game he was playing. He hadn't just waltzed into town and expected his words and pedigree to be enough to save him the way Caroline's Dad had. He had a ring that went a long way to ensuring his safety, unlike Caroline's Dad. It was also a game my Dad would've ultimately won had it not been for Stefan, Elena, and Bonnie saving Damon. Then, of course, there's what Katherine did when she made her presence in town known.

She had put my Dad in the hospital . . . probably for a number of reasons. She'd wanted to make an entrance. She'd wanted to prove a point to me. She'd wanted to get even for what he'd almost done to Stefan. She'd wanted to keep him from telling anyone what her larger plans were if he knew them. None of those had mattered to me. She'd hurt my Dad, the way I'd hurt Caroline's Dad, and I did get even with her for it by responding in kind. She stabbed him. I stabbed her. If Caroline wanted to burn me to get back at me for burning her Dad to get back at him for burning her, then she could, but she wouldn't. Apparently, the bitterness in my cup overflowed, and it manifested in the often spiteful ways I responded to things, but Caroline wasn't me. She'd likely give me the silent treatment for a while, and that was about it. 

If anyone had been there to stand up for me the way I'd tried to do for Caroline, then I doubt I'd be quite so offended by what I deemed to be unfair treatment of others. I hadn't really started responded to it by doing what I thought was necessary to right those situations until my parents sent me off to live on my own, but it did seem to be an ongoing issue, first with Katherine, then with the werewolves, and now with this. I didn't know if it was right or not. Damon had seemed to think this was the lightest shade of gray he could go in response to Caroline's Dad threatening him, and I'd had my own reasons for being involved. People didn't seem to think my responses were right, but I sort of did. 

They felt right, and in this instance, my point had been made to Bill before he forgot it, but the compulsion that Caroline and her Mom had both wanted was also made possible, which meant that the overall results were a positive. Caroline's Dad wasn't making her feel bad anymore. He wasn't going to attack her again. He wasn't going to get himself killed by continuing to go after Damon. Didn't the outcome outweigh the methods? Was that possible, or did people really expect you to be a white knight all the time when dealing with supernatural beings and the humans that knew about them? Well, that just wasn't realistic. I doubted that I'd ever think it was, so, no, I wasn't sorry for what I did, and at the same time, Caroline had every right to be mad at me for what I did. 

If she wanted to punish me for it, then I wouldn't hold it against her. I could live with it as long a the results meant that things turned out okay in the end. Did that mean I was like my parents? I hoped not. I hoped I was doing it for other people and not for selfish reasons. I guess that just because I thought it was right and was willing to take whatever punishment I received, it didn't mean I wasn't being selfish. I did what I wanted rather than what other people wanted me to do. My parents raised me the way they did because they thought it was the right thing to do, and Caroline's Dad tortured her because he thought it was right. They'd been willing to live with whatever the consequences were if it meant they succeeded too. Did it make me like them? Maybe, except I wasn't doing it so I could get anything out of it. 

Caroline's Dad did what he did, so he could find a solution to the fact that his daughter was something he hated. That was for him. If my parents raised me alone, it was to save Elena. Those actions were for them. If my Dad planned on finding a way to save me that might one day include sacrificing his life for mine, then he trained me, so that when he was gone, I'd be able to protect myself, and that was different, because that had been for me instead of him. He'd sacrificed being the kind of Dad he maybe wanted to be, so I would be okay in the long run. Was I? That was the question. 

How I'd responded to Katherine had been a 'two birds with one stone,' kind of situation. I'd planned on killing her, because it would've solved the problem with Tyler, but I'd drawn it out to get back at her for a multitude of her sins; me, Mason, Damon, Dad. Killing myself to kill her and save Tyler was altruistic. Making her attempted death take so long wasn't. 

How I'd responded to Jules had been as much about handing out some kind of punishment for the suffering she'd caused as it was finding a way to take my mind off of Rose's death. Neither were particularly altruistic, but the first was more just, while the second was selfish. Except Jules isn't the one I'd killed, and how I'd responded to the pack had been about having a challenge to take my mind off of Rose at first, but then it'd changed. I think that's what threw me off about it for so long. When I'd first seen the pack, my thoughts were drastically different than when I actually took them on. Jules may have been my target, but it wasn't about going through them to get to her or about more numbers meaning a greater challenge. They needed to be stopped. If they'd had their war, people would've died, and the way they tortured Caroline meant they were cruel. 

They were a far greater danger to the town than any vampires were. I think maybe tracking Mason down on my own was the first step in my philosophy on what my responsibilities were when it came to protecting people, but killing the rest of his pack is when I really started committing to it. It was definitely a turning point . . . and if it had really only been about killing Jules, then I ultimately wound up letting her go, because it was better if she left town with Tyler than have Damon kill Tyler or Tyler continue to not really understand his new wolf status and kill people.

What happened with Caroline's Dad was a mixed bag. I'd done what I wanted, but something had to be done about the guy, and if it kept Damon from killing him and made him nicer to his daughter, then it had to be done anyway . . . And this was what happened when you spent time alone. You used it to think. 

I knew myself well enough to honestly say that there were negative aspects to things I'd thought or felt before I'd done some of the things I'd done, but I wasn't overly bad either. I was somewhere in between, and really only just becoming an adult. I was still defining my place in the world and figuring out who I was away from my parents and what they wanted. I was also human, and I don't know if it was even possible to be truly altruistic as a vampire hunter, or if there would always be this duality to the things I did. 

Looking at my guitar, I didn't feel much like playing anything anymore, so I decided to go out to my little training course and get some practice in while I had the chance. It helped settle whatever anxiety I was feeling over the phone call with Caroline and the first day of school fast approaching. When I was done, it was getting pretty dark, and I'd tired myself out, but I was nowhere near being tired enough for sleep. A long shower didn't help on the sleep front either. Hm. What to watch? What to watch? Grabbing my laptop, I decided on _Monsters Inc._ and was all of 5 minutes into it when Damon's ringtone started playing on my phone. I rolled my eyes at the first thing out of his mouth.

_"Where are you?"_

"The last place you left me."

_"So, you're not . . . you know what? That's great. Stay there."_

"Wh - "

I looked down at my phone after his abrupt ending and considered chalking it up to . . . Yeah, I got nothing. He didn't call for no reason. Knowing he probably wouldn't answer, I still tried calling him back and was pleasantly surprised when he picked up on the second try. Taking a page from his book, I didn't bother with saying hello. "What's wrong?"

_"Nothing. I'm on my way back . . . just wanted to know where you were."_

"You are such a liar."

_"Hear that?"_ He stuck his phone out of what I assume was a car window before bringing it back to his ear and saying, _"I'm coming back as we speak."_

Getting up from my bed to put on a pair of jeans, I responded, "But I was just getting ready to go - "

_"Don't. Just stay where you are."_

Hm. He really wasn't making this very easy for me to guess where it was that he didn't want me to be. "So, Klaus is in town . . . I've got that much . . . Where -"

_"Eve. So help me - "_

"You thought I was somewhere else. Everyone my age is most likely wherever Caroline is, and she said something about a senior prank night . . . senior being a school thing . . . Is he at the school, Damon?

_"Eve. Do not - "_

"Meet you there."

I hung up and ignored it instantly ringing back, while I went to my door to grab my black hooded sweatshirt. Hooded sweatshirts wouldn't keep you from being bitten by something supernatural, but if you kept them zipped up, they did have a tendency to get in the way and buy you a microsecond before you were bitten. If it wasn't the middle of August, I'd probably just wear my leather jacket, because that did help put a little more of a barrier between you and whatever hard surface you were thrown into than a sweatshirt did, but it was the middle of August, which meant it was hot even at night, and the leather would make me miserable and slow me down. I needed to be able to move as fast as my reflexes allowed me to be.

Then I was onto my weapons cabinet, so I could pull out a few things I thought I might need from there. I wanted to travel light, so I could keep my hands free, which meant I was thinking a couple of stakes, my gun with the wooden bullets, and my dart gun. I'd been working on a couple of new darts for just this kind of occasion. I hadn't expected to need them so soon, but at least I was quasi-prepared . . . better prepared than the town was anyway. Damon hadn't had a chance to tell the Sheriff about putting vervain in the town's water supply. Such a shame. I really could've used that tonight. 

Last but not least, I put on a pair of leather army boots. I needed something a little heavier to protect my feet. It really wouldn't do to have an Original stomp on my foot and have that bring me to my knees. It was only as I was heading out the door that I realized that if I wanted to get to the school, then I needed to get there by foot, and if I wanted to get there in a timely manner, I needed to run. Damn.


	17. A Sister for A Sister

Almost to the final corner that would lead me onto the street where the school was, and I was all too well aware that the shower I'd taken had been in vain, but despite the sweat, I was sure I'd made it here in record time. I wasn't even sure anyone at the school was still alive, but the thought that they might be was enough to push me to run harder. I slowed my pace to a walk just before I got around the corner, and it would appear that I'd missed the show. They were packing up to leave. 

Klaus was taking a dead Elena from Stefan's arms, so he could carry her to my car that was parked down the street. Stefan didn't seem all that broken up about it, so maybe she wasn't dead, but even if she was just hurt, I didn't think he'd be all that calm about handing her over to Klaus like that, and why did Klaus want her body at all? Did he want to make sure she stayed dead unlike the last time he left her body behind? Well, she was my sister, so really funeral arrangements should go to me. I'm pretty sure she would be happiest being buried next to her parents for all eternity, so I needed to make that happen. I couldn't think about the ramifications of the invisible sister I'd grown up with being dead and leaving me the last remaining survivor of my family, because first, I had to focus on negotiating the release of her body.

Realizing that my dart gun was already in my hand as my feet carried me closer to them through the shadows, I lifted it and aimed at the blonde woman that was complaining about something to Klaus. Her accent was eerily similar to his and Elijah's, so I'd say she was most likely the sister, not that I'd ever seen her face. I couldn't see it now. They were walking away from me. Two shots fired in quick succession and aimed lower than Klaus anticipated meant that even though he heard the shots and stuck his arm out to take the darts for her, he didn't put his arm or hand in the right place. His hand went high to protect her heart. He should've gone low, but then most brothers probably wouldn't go near their sister's asses, and that included Klaus in this particular situation. 

When she whipped around with a sharp gasp, she seemed surprised. I was good, but I doubted I was good enough that an original vampire wouldn't be able to hear me walking up on her. They had just come out of the high school, so maybe she just assumed I was another student, but she had to have heard the shots going off, and with as fast as I expected her to be, she should've had enough time to move out of the way, but she hadn't. That left me with the conclusion that she was so used to her brother looking out for her that she thought she could afford to tune out everything going on around her as long as he was there, and she wasn't actually fighting in a battle scenario. 

Her brother, on the other hand, was always on alert no matter the situation, but his hands were full . . . her brother that started laughing when he saw where she'd been shot. She ripped the darts out before throwing them aside, so she could storm back towards me and slowed a few steps away as the contents of the darts took effect. Her legs started to give out as her eyes fluttered closed, and she landed on the ground rather ungracefully.

Without having to look to know who it was, as he proceeded towards my car, Klaus said, "Ah, Little Wolf Killer, does this mean you're coming back?" His jovial humor lapsed somewhat when he looked over his shoulder and saw his sister's body going into full desiccation mode, the way it would if she were dead. I was a little surprised that it'd worked so well myself, so I'd stopped to stand over her and watch it while it happened. I guess white oak ash really didn't agree with them. 

He quickly deposited Elena's body in Stefan's arms, so he could flash to his sister's side and give her a shake. "Rebekah? Rebekah?!" He listened for a heart beat, and I'm guessing there was none. "Reebeekaaah!" Okay, now I felt a little guilty. He was going to be pissed beyond belief, and I was a dead woman for sure, but what got to me was that his last outburst had been a grief stricken plea if I'd ever heard one. I couldn't let him think she was dead. Well, she was, but not dead, dead, or I didn't think she was.

Putting my hand out in his direction, palm out, so he could see it in his peripheral vision, the way you would do with someone you wanted to console without touching them, I leaned forward and said, "Shhh . . . It'll wear off . . . She's only about as dead as when you stake her with one of your special daggers . . . less even. I swear . . . I only want to talk."

Still staring at his sister's body and through gritted teeth, he spat out, "What was in it?"

Like I was going to say it out loud. I'm sure he already knew. "What do you think was in it, Klaus?"

At my tone, his face slowly turned in my direction, and if looks could kill? Yeah, I was so dead, but I wasn't scared of him . . . at least not of what he would do to me. Damon? Caroline? Yeah, but me no, and that was another excellent reason for me to have no friends. "How did you find out?"

Nobody told me. He needed to know that, so this only fell back on me. "Guesswork? I mean I could spell out how I got from A to B, but there are ears on us, and I don't think it'd do you any favors in the future if those ears heard . . . I started drinking it when I went on the road with you, and to be on the safe side, the habit stuck. So what was in the dart was just my blood."

Realizing that I wasn't being coy, just protective of the information, his eyes remained deadly, but the tension in his brow smoothed out somewhat. "It won't kill me."

My eyebrows arched. "I didn't think it would . . . Mostly, I figured if it felt the way a punch to the stomach feels to a human, it'd be enough."

"Enough for what?"

"To make you second guess biting me twice? I didn't know you when I first started taking it. I had no idea you're more of a ripping hearts and taking heads kind of guy than a biter."

"Oh, I've done my fair share of biting."

Rolling my eyes, I said, "I know, but it's not really your go to method of killing . . . unless you drain someone when you're feeding or want to torture a vampire with that werewolf venom of yours." Glancing at his sister quickly before looking back at him, I added, "You know I'm actually helping you out with all of this . . . She did lie to you about killing me, and rather than you punishing her for it, I did, so now I'm the bad guy."

His face took on a calculating look. "You may be onto something . . . Maybe I'll just let her kill you when she wakes up."

"Sounds fair."

He smirked. "You underestimate her."

"I assure you that I do not, or I wouldn't have gone to such extremes just to talk to you. I want my car back . . . and my sister's body, so I can give her the funeral she would want."

"Your sister is not dead. I need her alive . . . It would appear your theory on something other than human blood being required to complete the transition was not that far off base." Oh. I didn't really have time to register that before he looked reluctantly from me to his sister. "You can't be allowed to keep the information that helped you do this, Little Wolf Killer . . . I have too many enemies that will want it."

I was a little surprised by it, but the more we talked, the more I was almost sure that he didn't want to be the one to kill me. First Rebekah could do it, and now I suspected that he was seriously considering waiting until the vervain was out of my system and compelling me to forget what I knew about the white oak ash. "I know. Can't show me mercy either . . . You have a reputation to uphold."

His attention came back to me. "I believe I am the one who has underestimated how much you hate the thought of school. I notice you were not here tonight with the rest of your classmates."

I may have said once or twice that I'd rather be on the road with he and Stefan than go to school, and my opinion about being on the road with the two of them had been expressed many times. "Yeah, well I - "

"What is this?" I looked at Stefan and wondered where he'd put my sister, because I didn't see her in his arms. A quick glance behind him told me that he'd already put her in my car. "Let me finally kill her and be done with it."

Staring past me at Stefan, Klaus considered it before making a face that said, 'Why not,' and getting to his feet. "I have a proposition for you, Little Wolf Killer . . . Defeat the Ripper of Monterey and I will give you your car back. Your sister is mine though."

 _The Ripper of Monterey? Holy fucking shit. Stefan is the Ripper of Monterey?_ Klaus didn't think I could do it, or he would've at least mentioned compelling me to forget what I knew if I won. To be honest, I had my own doubts about it. That was some reputation that proceeded my roommate . . . but I was a professional. I didn't let my doubts show as I said, "Or you could let her stay here, where she won't be a suicide risk, because she'll be surrounded by her support system. You could compel her not to commit suicide, but then there are always loop holes, so she could just find a way around it. If she stays here, you can come by every month or so for a bag of blood, and I can protect her."

Leaning over my shoulder to whisper into my ear, and sounding amused, Klaus retorted. "I can't allow that, but we'll discuss you coming with us to protect her, and that's assuming you win." Walking around me as he made his way to the sidelines in the middle, he added, "By the way, he's been compelled to flip his switch, so account for that," with a half-hearted flick of his wrist over his shoulder, and I don't know if that was really intended to help me or not. It did make me immediately adjust the way I felt I had to deal with Stefan, but not in time to really do anything about it, because apparently that motion of his hand was the signal for his attack dog to finally come off its leash, or at least that's the way Stefan took it.

The timing on this one was tighter than the last time Stefan attacked me. 

_One thousand one._ Stefan flashed in front of me, and had his fangs sunk into my neck by the time I had a stake in my hand. The vervain in my blood wasn't going to be enough to stop a true Ripper. He'd drink as much as he could stomach, but mostly he just wanted to rip my throat out and didn't care about the contents of what was inside. And here's the thing about being bitten by a vampire. Never panic. Never get angry. Never do anything to increase your heart beat. Make your body believe that it is bored, or you'll pump your blood into them faster. Never get scared or allow the shock of being bitten get to you, or you'll pass out, and you need all the time you can get. In short, shut down your emotions as well as they do, and you buy yourself a few seconds.

 _One thousand two._ I reached up behind him and plunged my stake through a soft part at the back of his neck until I felt it scrape against my shoulder at the front. His jaws unhinged slightly at the shock of being impaled. Thank you Katherine for that little piece of advice.

 _One thousand three._ With the new space I had, I brought my other hand up to the part of the stake sticking out of the front of his neck, and now I had complete control of his head as I turned it away from me. Based on past experience, I knew could sever his head from his shoulders with a stake as well as I could a dagger with this move, but I didn't want him dead.

 _One thousand four._ I continued to turn his head away from me and pushed it down using both hands. Since I didn't want the stake to rip out his throat, I slammed my body into his, making him fall face first on the ground with me on top. Before we even landed, my left hand was going to my other stake at the back of my jeans.

 _One thousand five._ I was a centimeter away from slamming the second stake down through his spine, roughly 3 vertebrae down, so he would instantly become a paraplegic and stop moving. I would've then snapped his neck, but none of that happened, because I was flung away from him by unseen hands. I didn't have time to think about why that'd happened or do much of anything other than quickly grab another stake, while I rolled onto my back, so I could at least be facing him when he pounced again. This time, he knew better than to bite me, so it was an easy guess on where his hand was going when he reached for me. 

_One thousand eight._ I slammed my favorite stake through his wrist at the same time his finger tips got to the skin roughly just above my heart. He roared in annoyance more than pain, and I grabbed my final stake as his other hand flashed towards me. 

_One thousand nine._ I jammed the stake through his other wrist, and he decided biting me might be for the best as my hands were occupied with the stakes keeping his hands away from me, but I let his right hand go as his fangs tore into my neck, so I could grab my gun with wooden bullets.

 _One thousand ten._ I struggled to lift the gun to the base of his skull before pulling the trigger. 

_One thousand eleven._ He fell on top of me, but I wasn't done with him yet. I quickly rolled him under me before reaching down to snap his neck and making sure he stayed down.

Still in full hunter mode, I put my gun away, retrieved the stakes from his wrists, and stood to face my unseen attacker. My gaze landed on one Bonnie Bennet.


	18. Sometimes I Do Bad Things

I'm sure I made quite the sight, covered in blood, hair a mess, eyes that coldly promised death to anyone who crossed my path. I wasn't the slightest bit happy that I'd been prevented from finishing my bout with Stefan in under seven seconds, and it wasn't because I cared about winning in even less time than I had the last time he tried to kill me. It was those tacked on 4 seconds that'd nearly been my undoing, and it was all the fault of someone who thought they had a right to interfere on his behalf . . . someone who should have for all and intents and purposes been on my side, because I was a human, and he was a vampire.

Witches had rules on those kinds of things, or the supposedly 'good' ones did, and yet there she was interfering on a vampire's behalf, like I was the real monster. What right did she have to judge me when she's the one who essentially killed my Dad? It just went to prove what I'd been saying all along. If she or the others did something 'bad,' then they didn't think it was bad because they were the ones doing it, and damn anyone who went against them.

My stride carried me in her direction, and she haughtily said, "Like I was gonna let you kill him. Elena - "

"Right . . . Elena." I got to within half a dozen steps of her before I started circling, like a tiger circling it's prey. 

"Eve - "

"You think getting personal by saying my name is going to save you now?" She scoffed at that, and circling behind her, I emotionlessly said, "Maybe you think it's because you are best friends with my sister, but here's the truth. You are a witch, and that makes you fair game to a hunter like me."

Her eyes widened marginally before they set in a scowl as she turned to look at me. "Anytime you think - "

"I already know what the consequences for Jeremy have been since you raised him from the dead . . . But what have they been for you?" Stopping to face her, I added, "You clearly still have some of your power, but I couldn't help but notice that I didn't get flung all that far . . . Are your powers depleted, Bonnie?" The look on her face and the way she shrunk back into herself were answer enough. "Then I'd suggest you not say anything that you can't back up with actions. It's a bad tactic to start using, because some day someone is going to call you on it."

Anger flashed across her face as she closed some of the distance between us. "Who the hell do you think you are?"

Stepping closer until I was in her space, I answered, "The person you just tried to kill . . . Better watch it Bonnie. If you keep breaking the rules like this, then nature might just take all of your powers." Circling her again to unsettle her, I said, "I bet those powers are pretty important to you, huh? I mean they give you a sense of identity . . . purpose . . . what if you didn't have them at all?" Witches could kill other witches with magic. Witches could kill monsters with magic. Witches could kill humans with a ceremonial knife or some other kind of ritual required for a spell, but to use their magic to kill a human? It was seriously frowned upon unless you found a loophole, and I knew she knew at least one of those. I just had to make her mad enough not to think of one. Smirking, I added, "I say we find out."

The power of suggestion was exactly that, a power. Her eyes never left me as I walked in an ever steady arch around her, so she was watching me when I pulled my dart gun out of my pocket and reached into my pocket to pull out a vervain dart. It wouldn't do anything to hurt her, but now I was curious to find out how much those powers meant to her and if she actually deserved to have them. If they meant a lot to her, but she didn't deserve them, then she'd kill me if she thought I took them. If they meant a lot to her, and she did deserve them, then she would let me walk away. It wasn't a forever kind of test. It was a 'is she too immature and unable to control her powers at this point of her life' kind of test. 

I tried not to let it get to me when I heard another voice enter the conversation. "What's going on here? Bonnie? Eve, what are you doing?"

I shrugged before loading the chamber with my dart and answered, "Well, Caroline - "

Bonnie cut me off. "If you think you're going to take my powers from me without a fight, then you've got another thing coming."

One of my eyebrows arched as I flicked a nonchalant gaze in her direction. "Only if you don't deserve them, and with responses like that, I'm beginning to think you won't."

A second later, Caroline was standing between us. "I meant, why are you two over here fighting when he has Matt?"

Yeah, I was vaguely aware of the fact that after Bonnie had interfered in the fight, Klaus had made a point of saying that if she did it again, he'd kill Matt. Pointing my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of Klaus, I answered, "Well, apparently that is the only way that he could keep Bonnie from getting me killed . . . You know it's pretty bad when he is the arbiter of what is a fair fight."

Looking over her shoulder at Bonnie, Caroline seemed surprised. "Bonnie?"

Dodging the question, Bonnie asked, "Where's Tyler?"

"I sent him home when I smelled the blood. What's she talking about?"

"She was going to kill Stefan. Elena's already lost so much. I couldn't let her do that."

And now back to me. "Kill him? Yes. Permanently? No." 

Back to Bonnie as Caroline looked at her friend and said, "She'd never kill Damon's brother, Bon. I know she can play a bit rough, but - "

"Play? Are you kidding me right now? Wait. Is that what she does to you when you two are training? Does she have you convinced that this is some kind of a game that - "

"What do I look like, an idiot? I know she wasn't really playing. The blood pouring out of her neck tells me she actually had to defend herself." She was right. There was a difference between fighting for your life and training. Training made defensive moves and attacking moves more ingrained, so that you didn't have to think about them when you were fighting for your life.

"You didn't answer my question." Looking past Caroline to me, Bonnie appeared to take that as the only answer she needed. "You're no better than Damon, you know that? He used to hurt her too for some kind of sick and twisted - "

Stepping between us again, so the attention was on her, Caroline's voice rose while she said, "It's nothing like what he used to do to me when I was human . . . She builds me up. He only used to tear me down."

As if she suddenly understood something, Bonnie's eyes narrowed. "How are you so controlled around all this blood, Care? You should be struggling with it more than you are. Does she - "

Looking confused, Caroline responded, "She bleeds when I hurt her, so I'm used to it, but I'm not going anywhere near her blood again. It's toxic. Stefan doing what he did to her also tells me that there is something seriously wrong with him . . . like he's flipped his switch kind of wrong." You could say I was almost proud of how well she was piecing things together. She was already a lot smarter than most people believed, but I'd been trying to get her to become more confident in her intelligence. She didn't have to choose brains or beauty. 

"For you to know that, it means you've had to bite her."

"You're missing the point."

"No, I think you are, Care . . . She's making you a better killer."

"She lets me be who I am!" There was a brief pause, and Caroline almost whispered, "Without judgement . . . She's making sure that I never end up like that." Caroline pointed at Stefan's body before saying, "You guys aren't always going to be around. I'm going to have to learn to protect myself, and she understands that. I haven't quite figured out the not getting taken part, and I wasn't expecting Klaus's sister to be Klaus's sister, but - " 

Raising her hands as if to wash herself of the problem in front of her Bonnie cut her off. "Look, I'm gonna make this real easy for you Care . . . I won't be friends with you if you keep going down the path she's leading you down. I tolerate what you are because - "

You could heal from a physical wound, but emotional ones never really healed, and Caroline was too good to turn her back on someone she thought needed her help, which she clearly thought I did. I wouldn't let her suffer for me. "There's no need for that."

Turning towards me, Bonnie said, "You can stay out of this. It doesn't concern you."

"Really?" My forehead crinkled in faux-confusion as I said, "I thought it was all about me . . . I will not allow you to hurt one of the most sensitive people I've ever met - "

"And how many people have you actually met? I thought you were raised by wolves or something."

Yeah, Damon had said that about me more than once, and Caroline must've parroted it back to the others at some point . . . possibly after I burnt her Dad's hand with my lighter. That seemed like something an angry Caroline would do, and now Bonnie was throwing it back in my face. Arching an eyebrow, I answered, "More than I care to have met . . . yourself included, and as I was saying, I won't allow you to use one of your oldest friends as an emotional punching bag over me . . . I'm bowing out of something I didn't even fully comprehend was as big of a problem as it is until now. You don't want me to be Caroline's friend . . . fine. I won't be, but it's not because she doesn't deserve to be. It's - "

"Doesn't deserve to be? Wow, you've got some nerve. Could your ego be any bigger?"

"Says the witch that's about to lose all her power."

"Eve - "

I glanced at Caroline. "Relax. She'll keep it if she deserves it." My eyes went back to Bonnie as I straightened my shoulders and then looked at the gun in my hand. "I really wanted to talk to Klaus - "

"Elena said you might work with him. I thought it was just Katherine, but I'm starting to think she was right."

I didn't let it rattle me. The time for childish games and words and whatever the hell else this had devolved into was over. Instead I threw her a look that said not to interrupt me again as I continued. "And I came prepared." Tilting my head in the direction of Rebekah's body, I said, "A couple of darts for his sister . . . and one for the witch I last saw him with in Chicago, and let me tell you. She was a lot more powerful than you . . . particularly now that your power's depleted."

"Eve, don't."

 _Thanks for helping me sell it without meaning to do it, Caroline._ "So, here's how this is going to go. I am going to - "

Seeming a little unnerved as I started my methodical circling of her again, Bonnie interrupted me to try and postpone the inevitable. "There's nothing out there that can - "

"Bind a witch's power?" My eyebrows rose as I said, "Oh there is." When she didn't have anything to say to that, I innocently asked, "What, didn't any of your family's grimoires say that, or have you just not gotten that far along in reading them yet?" According to my Mom's books on the subject, you didn't really get very many strikes as a witch. Rarely three. Sometimes two, and depending on how big the infraction, one. Raising someone from the dead was a big strike. If her powers were depleted, then I'm guessing the spirits of her ancestors had already cut her off . . . that was usually like being put on probation and a pretty good lesson to witches. Something told me it wouldn't be enough with this one.

"Eve, my Dear, I know what you're thinking, and I can't allow it." Hearing Klaus's voice took me out of the moment briefly. I'd known he was there, but I hadn't really thought of him as a threat, so I put him on the back burner. Matt wasn't even there anymore, because Klaus had let him run along home . . . and Klaus really wanted me to listen to him if he was saying my actual name instead of one of his nicknames.

I'd developed a theory about him during my time on the road with he and Stefan. Unless you were in his family, he used nicknames, like doppleganger, ripper, little wolf killer, to dehumanize the people around him, so he wouldn't feel guilt if he killed them or so he could put a wall up between himself and friends, because he didn't trust anyone not to hurt him, which meant he'd been hurt a lot by the people closest to him in his life. I think that based on what Damon had said he'd found in the storage locker, it was also why Klaus's entire family was put on ice and stuffed in coffins. They couldn't hurt him if they were dead and yet undead, like keepsakes he could cart around with him wherever he went. He was by far the darkest shade of gray that I'd met, but anyone who could love and hurt that deeply wasn't as truly evil as he seemed. 

While I debated on what Klaus would do to interfere, Bonnie said, "I don't need you - " 

Cutting Bonnie off with a look, Klaus said, "Oh, it's not for you, love." Looking back at me, he continued, "But I do know the price that it requires, and it's one that I know to be too high."

I didn't know if that was enough for Caroline or even Bonnie to piece together what the price would be, but I suspected it was, so almost as soon as the words left his mouth, I was forced to act before he could stop me. My face set in defiance, I kept my attention on him as I pointed my gun in the general direction of Bonnie and shot her in the leg, thinking, _'This from the guy who wanted me to fight a ripper.'_

"What'd you do?! What'd you do? What'd you - " 

Caroline tried to calm Bonnie down, while I kept an eye on Klaus and muttered a partially coded message. "Don't get involved. My family has more than one secret. Just ask Caroline." 

Bonnie cut herself off as the shock of being shot took full effect. "You bitch!"

My eyebrow ticked up as I said, "Temper. Temper. My advice would be - "

She let out a blood curdling scream and forced all her anger in my direction without realizing that her powers hadn't been effected at all. The next thing I knew, I was doubling over in pain with a silent shriek of my own as my hands clutched my head almost like they thought it was the only way to keep my brain from trying to escape my skull, but I wasn't a vampire. I wasn't a werewolf. I was a human, so all it took was one aneurism to wipe me out.


	19. Dying Really Gets You Places

I sat up with a gasp, like my body was craving air the way a fish craves the water. Oh, sitting up that fast may not have been a good idea. I felt awful as I fell onto my back with a slight groan. My head hurt. My body was freezing and sore. I felt nauseous. It was only after I collapsed onto my back that I noticed I wasn't lying in the middle of the street. I was on a bed, a comfortable bed, my bed? And it provided me with a perfect view of Damon Salvatore as he paced back and forth, like a caged animal. He'd stopped briefly to watch me as I took my first breath in what must have been hours, but now he was back to the pacing again.

"Do you have any idea what happened?"

Yes and no, but I was sure he was about to fill me in on the parts I'd missed. Apparently, Caroline thought fast to keep Klaus from killing Bonnie and did what I'd hoped she'd do, which was tell Klaus that I'd be fine because I was wearing my ring. He hadn't known what she meant, but then she'd told him what the ring did, and he took off with me _and_ Elena in my car.

From the sounds of it, Damon had met up with him at the hospital. How he knew to go there, I don't know, because he skipped right over that to say that he'd had to play the only card he had, which was that he and Katherine had found Mikael, some guy who scared Klaus, and Klaus dropped everything to flee Mystic Falls. I pondered who this Mikel was, while Damon went on to say that Klaus had found the time in his escape to go find Stefan, compel him to stay here and keep an eye on things, and left me what must've been a letter, because one landed on my chest after Damon flicked it in my direction. 

I had just enough time to register that it'd already been opened and most likely by him when he flung his hand in the direction of a pile of my bloody clothes on the floor. I guess Caroline was waiting for Damon when he got back to the house with Elena and I, and she changed me out of my things, so it didn't look like I was so obviously dead or something, because it was getting to him. He'd seen the ring work on snapped necks, but not bites, and she'd tried to tell him how I'd actually died to put his mind at ease, but that made it worse, because even though witches were supernatural, he didn't know if the ring really worked on anything supernatural or only vampire related issues or something. I don't know. He was rambling by that point, or he was until he stormed out my bedroom door and slammed it closed behind him. 

Before I could move a muscle, he was back and continued pacing with a frustrated growl, as he said, "I can't stand the sight of you right now, and it is taking everything in my power not to tell you I never want to see you again, because I know if I do, you'll believe I mean it, walk out that door, and I'll never see you again . . . and that . . . the idea of what'll happen to you . . . what you'll become . . . the thought of you dying out there somewhere in pain and alone?" He paused and shook his head before saying, "I had a taste of what that's like the month you were gone and I can't live like that . . . And why the hell aren't you telling me I'm overreacting and that you won't leave even if I do kick you out?" 

He seemed to genuinely want to know the answer, but my throat was parched. I looked around and saw a glass of water on the nightstand by the bed and went to reach for it, but he was faster and got to it first. Holding it away from me, like I couldn't have it until I told him, his eyebrows rose in expectation, and I slumped back on my pillow again. I touched my throat in the hopes that he'd understand and all I got was, "You're thirsty?" I nodded. "Does it hurt?" I nodded again, and he said, "Good . . . If you want this, then I want - "

It felt like hot pokers were being shoved down my throat as I said, "I went too far this time." At the scratchy, hollow sound to my voice, his hand holding the glass shot out in my direction. I drank and let the water soothe the pain in my throat until it was gone and then sat up, so I could swing my legs over the edge of the bed. I think my blood was finally starting to pump the way it should, so I was feeling a little better. "Our fights are almost always one sided. I do something reckless. You get mad. I don't think I've done anything wrong, so I'm not going to apologize for it, and then I have to live with you giving me the cold shoulder until it blows over." Hanging my head, I sighed, "But this time I went too far, and what you really want is for me to fight back, because it means I care enough to do it." Shaking my head before I flicked a glance in his direction, I went back to staring at my feet and said, "But I'm not going to fight with you this time, because you're not in the wrong. I know I am. I didn't take how you'd feel about it into consideration at all. So you have all the power . . . what happens next is entirely up to you."

Crouching down in front of me, so he could catch my eye, Damon, looking really quite vulnerable, quietly whispered, "You died."

I gave him a slight nod. "I know."

"On purpose."

"I know."

"To take out the powers of the only witch who sometimes helps us."

"I know."

"Why?"

"A lot of reasons."

"Just give me one."

"After my fight with Stefan, I - " 

I didn't know how to explain it. Cutting myself off with a sigh, I looked away from him, and he said, "I saw what he did to you, and to come out on top the way you did, I know what you must've had to do. You couldn't flip it back, could you?" 

I threw a glance in his direction and shook my head before forcing myself to breathe and saying, "Not when I felt like I was still under attack. All I kept thinking was that she's too immature to have that much power, and if I pushed her over the edge, she wouldn't have something she wasn't responsible enough to have until she's a little older."

"It's too soon to know if it worked, but it's not looking good, and you are going to have a lot to answer for with everyone else." 

I absorbed that before bowing my head. "I'm not even sure that's the reason I did it when I did though . . . I think it was something else." 

Gently placing his finger under my chin to make me look at him, he asked, "What? I need to know, so this doesn't happen again."

"When Caroline showed up, it threw me off."

"So her being there was enough to bring you back, but it wasn't enough to stop you." 

I felt my eyes sting and blinked a couple of times, but ultimately lost out to the single tear that decided to slide down my face as I shook my head and whined, "It sounds so stupid."

"Tell me." His voice was gentle, but I went to look away from him again, and his hand slid to the side of my face to keep my focus on him. I felt another tear fall before quietly answering him. 

"I was hurt . . . I was literally fighting for my life, and she helped the ripper. I know she didn't think it through, but her instinct was that he's the lesser of two evils. She automatically assumed that I would kill him . . . like permanently kill him, and then the things she was saying to Caroline . . . the absolute hatred she has for me, and I know it's the same thing Elena feels . . . They think I'm like Katherine. They think I'm like Klaus. There's some debate on whether I'm working with one or both of them . . . I was hurt, and now I've gone and proved just how bad I can really be out of spite. I'm sorry."

Taking one of my hands that was folded in my lap and leaning forward, so he could touch his forehead to mine, Damon was quick to say, "I don't want you apologizing to any of them."

"Why not?"

"Because no matter what you said or did, you died for it. That's apology enough." 

"Damon - "

"No . . . And why were you there at all? I told you not to go."

"I thought I could do something about it, but when I got there, I saw them carrying Elena . . . I thought she was dead. I wanted to negotiate for her body, so I could bury her next to her parents, rather than whatever shallow grave he gave her . . . and I wanted my car back."

He smiled briefly at the mention of my car. "Well, it's sitting out front right now." I relaxed a little at that even as I felt his breath on my lips and became aware of how close we were. "And you wanted to test out your white oak ash theory?" Other than Klaus, Damon was the only person on the face of the planet that knew what'd been in that dart. I nodded, and he said, "I hear it worked." I gave him a single nod again, and he said, "And you wanted something to take your mind off of the big day on Monday?" Nuzzling into his face a little more, I hummed in the affirmative, and it was a good three seconds before he whispered, "It's okay . . . You have my permission to kiss me any time you want." With an unsure smile, he leaned forward, so his lips were hovering just a few centimeters from mine as he said, "Not that I don't find you completely intoxicating, but I said I'd wait until - "

"What about Katherine?"

He pulled back to look at me. "What about her?"

"I look exactly like her . . . You loved her for like 150 years. How am I supposed to know it's really me that - "

"No, I _thought_ I loved her for 150 years."

"Until she said she'd always choose Stefan. That doesn't mean what you felt wasn't real."

"I kissed her . . . Actually she kissed me, and I let her."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure the two of you have done a lot more than - "

Rolling his eyes, he said, "No, I mean when she had me driving around in circles on my most recent road trip . . . I wanted to see if I felt anything. I don't. That's done . . . Next question."

I guess he told me. Was that good? It seemed like it should be, but I still felt a little disappointed that they'd kissed. I tried not to dwell on it, because I was starting out easy on the issues I had. "So if it's done, and you hate her, but I look like her then - " 

"You don't look much like her anymore . . . At least not to me . . . It's the differences I find most attractive." 

"And Elena?"

Looking a little cocky, he smiled. "Same answer."

"Damon, you almost died for her. You can't tell me that you don't - "

Placing his forearms on the bed to either side of my thighs, he leaned closer to say, "I loved the _idea_ of her, but it'll always be you. I just didn't know it until I was dying. I didn't care where anyone else was as long as I had you, and I knew I deserved to die for the things I've done, but I would've given anything to take it all back, and it wasn't for me. It was for you . . . You need me, and I don't think that because I want it to be true. I know it is." Looking at my lips, he smirked. "Next question?" When his eyes came back to mine, they were smoldering, and I felt my confidence wither. 

"What about my Mom?" His eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and I quickly said, "I know what you told Stefan the night we met . . . when he was asking about Isobel, and before you knew it was Elena's Mom, you went on and on about how you - "

"When have you and my brother even been in the same room long enough - " A look of understanding crossed his face. "On that little road trip of yours? May I remind you that it's the same road trip he wanted to kill you on . . . Nothing happened. I swear."

"I don't believe you. You didn't know about Elena or me. There was nothing to stop you from - "

Sucking in air between his teeth, like I'd staked him, he paused a beat before asking, "Is it a deal breaker?"

So he did sleep with my Mom. I muttered, "Liar," and he smiled as he leaned closer. 

"That wasn't a yes."

"It's sick, like really messed up and twisted."

"Still not a yes." I didn't respond, and his eyes scanned my face before he looked at me and said, "Does admitting it account for nothing?" I sighed. I really didn't want to think about him being with her. It was just way too Mrs. Robinson for me. On the other hand, he did eventually confess, which meant it wasn't a question that was floating around in the back of my mind anymore. It may not be the answer I wanted, but it did put those questions to rest, and it was in the past. It's not like he could change it. Almost as if he could read my mind, he added, "I'd take it back if I could . . . There's a lot I'd take back if I could, but it's like you said. I didn't know about you then. What matters now is that I'll look nowhere else if you just say the word."

I was entirely out of my element. Planting my hands behind me on the mattress, I defiantly asked, "What word?" 

Leaning over me as he started to crawl onto the bed, Damon answered, "Say you want me." 

When I opened my mouth to respond, not even I knew what I was going to say. "What do you mean exactly?" 

Now he was confused . . . maybe a little angry? "What do you mean, what do I mean? It's pretty simple. You either want me, or - "

"Yeah, but like want you, want you or _want_ you?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Well, you're kind of going at vampire speed here, like 0 to 100 in a second, and I'm a little unsure of - "

His posture changed from being one that was predatory to one that resembled my friend as he relaxed. "Evie?"

"Hm?"

"Have you ever - " 

"Are you kidding me right now? I said I used to sneak out to play the piano. That wasn't a euphemism for having anonymous sex with every guy in a 5 mile radius." 

A short laugh escaped him before his eyes narrowed in thought as he bit his bottom lip. "And the list of guys I need to kill for just close encounters would be . . . "

He had to know all this, didn't he? Was it just that he hoped that I'd had something else, however fleeting, or maybe he'd been trying to reign in the vampire side of him that would be thrilled that he was the first to mark his territory . . . maybe he just expected me to be more like my sister. Sounding defeated, I answered, "Look no further than the guy in the mirror." 

Gently touching his forehead to mine with a sigh, he murmured, "You never said."

"Was I supposed to say something?"

"Would've been good to know that your first kiss was when I knocked you out using your own stash . . . I could've maybe tried to make it right."

"There's no way you could possibly make that right."

"Made it better then."

"It was memorable enough."

"For all the wrong reasons."

"I guess you did save my life."

Pulling back to look down at me, his eyes searched my face, like he was trying to see if I really believed that. A few moments later, he said, "So do you want me? And just to be clear, before I meant for sex, because I thought if that's all I can get, then I'll take it until I can make you love me . . . Now I mean the whole fucked up package . . . I mean deep down somewhere in there that is locked down tighter than Fort Knox do you want - " 

_Don't lie to him. After everything he's been through in his life, he needs to know._ I breathlessly answered, "Yes," and he stopped. 

"Yes?"

I nodded.

Getting a sly look on his face, he asked, "Yes, what?"

After briefly holding my breath, I hesitated and then said, "Yes," and he laughed.

A few seconds later, his eyes narrowed, as his smile fell, and he tried to appear serious, while he mocked me. "What do you mean exactly?" I threw him a look, and he struggled to maintain his composure. "Is it more of a 'I'm all you've got, so you guess I'll do' kind of thing?" He might be teasing me, but I suspected he really wondered if that was true, because now he was waiting for the answer, and it reminded me that I wasn't the only one who had serious issues with letting people close, because I wasn't the only one who'd been hurt by the people who'd mattered most to me. 

Biting the inside of my cheek, while I debated with myself on what to say, I eventually muttered, "You make me laugh. You make me cry. You make me so angry that I have to stake you sometimes. You make me feel . . . But - " I paused when his eyes narrowed into a more genuine glare, "You mean so much to me that I don't want something fleeting or temporary to take you from me . . . Dad said that Mom was his first love, and I saw how that turned out . . . I have to be sure that you'll be my only one if I'm going to risk it, and - " 

He leaned down to silence me by tentatively brushing his lips against mine. Part of me thought that it was a pretty effective way of getting me to shut up and part of me was still stuck on my point. Letting his lips hover just over mine, he asked, "Do you feel that?"

"Damon - "

His lips came back to mine with a little more pressure, and I responded in kind, causing him to linger a little longer this time before he pulled back to gently say, "Tell me you feel that, and I will spend every day for the rest of your life proving to you that I feel the same." 

What kind of feeling was he looking for me to feel? Was it that feeling in my chest, like the walls that I tried so hard to keep up were crumbling and the inevitable panic that followed? He didn't look like that's what he wanted to hear as his eyes searched mine for something to let him know I felt more. He was starting to look hurt, so I felt like I had to give him something. "I missed you." 

Uh, that's not what he was expecting, but he was quietly desperate enough to wait it out to see where I was going with it. "When I was on the road, I felt homesick . . . but it wasn't for my room or piano or this horrible little town. I still hate Mystic Falls . . . I was homesick for you. I could be anywhere as long as I have you with me." Looking away from him, I said, "And I don't know if that's what you want or not, but my Dad was wrong. It's not the piano that's kept me here as long as I have been." Flicking my gaze in his direction, I exhaled, "It's you." 

Finally putting me out of my misery, his mouth landed over mine again, and this time, I rode the panic out to see what was on the other side of it. Was this the feeling he'd meant? I didn't know how something could be euphoric and comforting at the same time . . . or how those could come together to make me feel like I wasn't alone. He deepened the kiss, and at my hum of approval when his tongue found mine, he smiled before shifting his weight to readjust us as he laid me back on the bed. Breaking the kiss to look down at me, he said, "Nothing has to change except we do that a little more."

In something of a daze, I asked, "But what if it doesn't work out?"

He seemed like he was debating with himself on something, but finally ended whatever it was by saying, "We'll make sure it does." Before I could say that it wasn't that simple, he stopped me by saying, "You should get some sleep. You've got a big day ahead of you if we're going to celebrate your last day of freedom."

Well, that was annoying. "You still expect me to go to school on Monday?"

He smirked. "What, you didn't think a little thing like dying was going to get you out of it, did you?"


	20. Do I Really Have to Do This?

Two mornings later, I reluctantly walked out of the bathroom, a billow of steam following me. I wasn't going anywhere unprotected, and my black hooded sweatshirt was still covered in blood. It was too hot for leather or my peacoat, so over my Bowie t-shirt and fitted-purple flannel, I threw on my army jacket, but found it strangely light. Searching it, I didn't find any of my weapons. "Looking for something?"

I turned and saw Damon lying on my bed, holding one of my stakes. I went to take it from him, and he held it away from me with a laugh. "It's school, not a war zone. You're not going to need these."

I reached for the stake again saying, "I might. I am going to school with 2 vampires and a hybrid," before he grabbed me by the wrist and rolled me under him.

Handing me the stake he said, "It might be three vampires and a hybrid. One stake."

Hugging the stake to my chest, I continued trying to negotiate. "One stake, one dagger, two vervain darts, and three wolfsbane darts. And what do you mean 3 vampires?"

He smiled. "Did I forget to mention we have an annoying house guest?"

"I already know Stefan's here."

"It's his house too. He's not a guest."

"Then who - "

"In his hurry to get out of Mystic Falls, Klaus may have left his dead sister behind, and she showed up earlier. Stefan and I both told her she can't stay here, but she doesn't have anywhere else to go, so it looks like she's staying for now."

"So, you're saying the Original vampire I temporarily killed is my new housemate?"

"For now."

Elena wouldn't have just invited her in here. "How the hell did she get into the house?"

Damon frowned. "Best guess? She found my realtor."

"Does that mean my room - "

"I, uh . . . I'm going to deal with that this morning. I need to find a new realtor."

"And that'll work?" He shrugged, and I said, "But it'll just be for my room . . . you don't want a pissed off Original to tear the house down, because she can't get in?"

"Something like that."

Taking a deep breath, I said, "If she's staying here, then she's staying _here_ at the boarding house, right? She's not really going - "

Damon looked towards the door before saying, "I have no idea what she's planning on doing, but from the sounds I've been hearing out there for the last half hour, I'd say she's getting ready to go out. I doubt she's worked a day in her life, so the timing suggests school."

"Why would she - "

He shrugged. "To get the full teenage experience now that her brother's out of her hair? Because she has a thing for Stefan and he's going? To actually do her brother's bidding and watch over his hybrid? To keep an eye on you? Who knows?"

"To keep an eye on me? You mean kill me. I should really take - "

"You're not taking all the weapons I found in this jacket and adding to them from the cabinet." I frowned, and his smile grew. "She's not going to kill you . . . Her brother made it pretty clear in his letter that she was to keep her hands off of you."

"Really? How would she know - "

"I gave it to her." 

"What's it say?"

"Read it for yourself."

The last letter he'd given me hadn't really been a very good one. I doubted this one would be any better. "I don't have it." Reaching under the pillow beneath my head he pulled the letter out and gave it to me. Tapping him on the chest with it, I asked, "Is this going to make my day worse?"

"I don't know . . . I'm done waiting to find out what it means, so you not reading it and explaining it to me might make my day infinitely worse."

"Which would ultimately make my day worse."

Shrugging a shoulder he came back with, "If that's how you want to see it."

I reluctantly opened the envelope as Damon gave me room to read it. 

_Little Wolf Killer,_

_I knew from our first meeting that you are an intriguing creature. You've managed to best the Ripper of Monterey at his worst, and you have yet to reach your peak. As discussed, I've returned your car. It is well deserved. Heed not the discouraging words of your peers for I know your heart to be pure. To valiantly go against the grain and fight fiercely in the face of adversity is but a show of strength. It is a strength someone I once lost possessed, and I know she would be most proud that you come from her. One of my greatest regrets is that I did not do more upon her death to preserve her memory. At times I've done the opposite and sought only to destroy her legacy for my own gain. You provide me with the opportunity to correct my past mistakes, and for that I am most grateful. Continue your education while I am gone, and when I return, we will train._

_Yours,_

_Nik_

_P.S. Rebekah, my Dear Sister, look after my hybrid for me while I'm gone, AND in the name of Tatia and all she once meant to me, I ask that you refrain from harming a single hair on Eve Gilbert's head. You know what will happen if you do not comply._

Damon was watching me intently as I read, so I tried not to smile when I read that Klaus wanted to train with me. I felt a little like I'd gotten an acceptance letter from the college of my choice. When I was done, I put the letter down to rest on my chest and looked at Damon. "Well, he certainly has lovely penmanship."

Not one to be outdone, he felt it important to say, "I have nice handwriting . . . what does it mean?"

"You've had longer to process it. What do you think it means?"

Picking the letter up and glancing through it, he answered, "It bothers me that he left you a letter at all. And who is Tatia?"

"I have no idea. I don't recognize the name."

"Well, it sounds to me, like he loved her. I don't like his interest in you."

"You may not like his interest in me, but it shouldn't be for the reason you think."

"See, I knew you'd know what this meant. You spent way too much time with him not to know."

"Well, for starters, I'd say you're right. He did love this Tatia, and obviously I remind him of her, but not quite in the way you're thinking. He's not looking for another love. He's looking for something else." Sitting up and pulling the top of the paper down, so I could see it too, I said, "See, here. He says I come from her . . . so - "

"You're related."

"Yeah, like I'm related to Katherine . . . if it weren't for her, I wouldn't be here. The same goes for this Tatia . . . and here, he says, he's sought only to destroy her legacy for his own gain . . . Elena, Katherine . . . the dopplegangers are Tatia's legacy . . . Remember what I said about dopplegangers? Their blood is - "

"Used by witches in powerful spells. Yeah, I remember . . . Breaking the curse took a doppleganger, so creating it probably took one too . . . Tatia?"

"That's what I'm thinking."

"So you look almost exactly like his lost love. It's not exactly instilling much confidence in me that this isn't a problem."

"The key word is 'almost'." Damon looked at me and I said, "You said it yourself. It's the differences that you notice. Maybe it's the same for him." His mind wasn't ready to shift off of being jealous of Klaus, so I rolled my eyes. "I'm the first descendent of hers that he's come across that he doesn't feel like he has to kill, because it gives him nothing in return. He doesn't need to use me for my blood to create hybrids either. I'm giving him another chance to do something he wishes he could've done if the situation was different. That's why he's grateful. I look almost exactly like her. If he wants to honor her, then instead of imagining I'm her, he imagines I could be -"

"Her child?" He shook his head, and now it was his turn to roll his eyes. "You're so naive sometimes."

"Does it help if I tell you he called me his protégé the last night I was with them? His interest in me is not the way you're thinking." 

Damon bit his bottom lip in thought and looked at the letter again before pointing at a line and saying, "He does basically tell you not to listen to the kids being mean to you, go to school, and he'll train you when he gets back." His eyes squinted before he looked up at me. "He hates me."

"Yep."

"If he's decided to step in as your guardian, he's not going to like that we're together."

"Nope."

A grin slowly spread across Damon's face. "Sneaking around behind his back to be with you is going to be so hot."

"He'll rip that bad boy heart of yours right out of your chest."

Damon's grin widened. "It would be worth it."

"Not to me."

"That's because you have yet to experience the desire for that which is forbidden, and that's exactly what you will be. If you add on top of that, the idea that every second I'm with you, I'm going against him, it makes the thought of being with you even more irresistible." I sighed and he leaned forward to press his lips to my forehead. "I already professed my love for you, so never doubt that. This is just the icing on the cake."

"Yeah, I don't know if the idea of you thinking about Klaus when we're together is all that appealing to me." 

"Oh come on. Let me have my fun with this." 

Rolling out from under him, I said, "Fine. While you do that, I'm going to have my own fun coming up with new and inventive ways to deal with his multitude of enemies who will be lining up to find ways they can use me against him when word gets out about this."

He was blocking my exit as I got to the door. "Whoa . . . This Mikel guy is going to take care of our little Klaus problem, and - "

"And how do we know he won't be an even bigger problem then Klaus?"

"Everything will be fine. I promise . . . But until Klaus is gone, word won't get out about this. You can't say anything to anyone."

"Hi, have we met? I'm Eve, a former recluse and current social pariah among my peers. It's not me you have to worry about. Word always finds a way of getting out . . . especially with you supernatural folk. You're always gossiping, like you haven't got anything better to do. His sister knows. You know. I'm guessing Stefan knows." Looking around us, I leaned forward to whisper. "I bet even Anna knows . . . It all goes downhill from there. Dead folks talk even more than the living because they definitely don't have anything better to do."

He looked torn between being concerned and wanting to smile. Eventually he pulled me to him in a tight embrace and exhaled a silent laugh before saying, "I won't let anything happen to you."

"Do I sound scared to you?"

He sighed before leaning back to look down at me. "Just let me have my moment and let me believe that me protecting you is something you actually want."

Patting his chest, I gave him a dry reply. "Great . . . So, this whole Klaus thing plays into both your bad boy and white knight fantasies . . . This is going to be so great for you."

His face took on a boyish look as he laughed again and let the warmth of his fondness for his best friend shine through before his lips landed over mine in a tender kiss that made me want to stay there all day. A minute later and sounding amused, he rested his forehead on mine to whisper, "Now about the weapons you stole back from me when we were on the bed."

"I thought those roaming hands of yours just got them back."

"I'm still missing one."

"What's the big deal? You're always up for breaking the rules. Why not on this?"

"It's going to be a high stress environment for you. The last thing you need is to be tempted to use one of your weapons on your classmates on your first day."

"Like you care what happens to any of my classmates."

"You're right. I don't. They could die in a fiery blaze for all I care, but that's not what would be best for you."

"What would be best for me?"

"Having a chance to be normal even if it's only for a few hours a day . . . You need to take back something that should've never been taken from you. You deserve a life. You're a human, not a monster, so stop hiding in the shadows, like one." 

I sighed before stepping back to pull a dagger out of my boot and placed the handle in his palm muttering, "But stalking prey from the shadows is particularly useful when hunting."

"Yeah, I know . . . I'm a monster. Kind of use shadows for the same thing myself." I looked up at him, and he smiled. "But I don't spend all my time there." Lifting his hand to show me his ring, he added, "I come out during the day and interact with people."

"So school is like my daylight ring?"

Pulling me to him again, he shook his head. "No. Knowing that I love you, whether they accept you or not, is." 

So, use knowing that he loved me to protect myself emotionally, the way his ring protected him from sunlight that hurt him physically, and if I did, then I at least had a chance of functioning semi-normally in society, more specifically, the shark infested waters of my soon to be school. The corner of my mouth turned up into a small smile as I said, "I think that was your moment."

Resting his forehead on mine, he asked, "And how'd I do?"

"I liked the parallel with your ring . . . Points off for be sappy . . . points added for it being short." Holding my breath, I whispered, "It was perfect. You keep that up, and I might eventually believe you."


	21. This Is the Opposite of Fun

I walked down the corridor to the sound of loud music and laughing and forced myself to take a deep breath and stay calm when I saw 2 bodies lying on the steps that lead up to Damon and Stefan's rooms. A quick glance into the living room, told me that Stefan was still at it, given the girls that he had playing Twister with him in there. What the hell was I supposed to do about that? I couldn't just let him carry on uninterrupted until those girls were dead too. I guess school was going to have to wait.

"Your brother is infinitely messier than you are."

I felt Damon's hands on my shoulders as he leaned over me saying, "Yeah, well, he's flipped his switch. He doesn't care about the mess." Biting my lower lip, while I debated on what I should do, and he added, "Go. I've got this," before giving me a small shove towards the door.

I took a step, and Stefan eagerly bounced up from the couch before sprinting over to us. "Great. So, we're finally ready to go. It was taking forever."

Damon did _not_ like that. I guess by saying he had this, he didn't necessarily mean he was going to get rid of the bodies. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" 

Stefan grinned at Damon. "To school . . . I have a job to do." Gesturing towards the bodies he smugly added, "You don't mind cleaning this up for me, do you?" before slinging his arm around my shoulders and saying, "Now that my lift's ready. I'm out of here."

Stefan steered me towards the door as I attempted to shove him off me and grumbled, "Drive your fancy red car."

Refusing to budge and leaning down to whisper in my ear, Stefan said, "What fun would that be?"

I looked up at him. "Then take your motorcycle."

"Nope." Calling over his shoulder, like he was going to a party, Stefan said, "Don't wait up, brother. Not sure when we'll be back," and Damon was immediately in front of us blocking the door.

Taking my arm and pulling me to him, Damon focused all of his attention on Stefan. "She's not going anywhere with you."

Stefan seemed amused by Damon's reaction. "Oh come on. You've finally convinced her to go. If you keep her here today, she'll talk herself out of it, and then she'll never go." Looking down at me he added, "Now or never, right?" before leveling a determined look at his brother. 

Before I could respond, Damon did. "Well, I'm taking her. Find your own way there."

Looking at me, Stefan grinned. "You know the beauty of older models? They are so easy to hot-wire, and - "

I stepped out of Damon's grip and went around him saying, "You are not hot-wiring my car . . . I'm driving."

Condescension dripped from Stefan's tongue as he walked around Damon and patted him on the shoulder. "You hear that brother? She's driving."

I was really starting to hate the way they called one another _brother_. There were times when it held all the warmth that the term should hold, but most of the time it was used as the greatest insult, an antagonistic word meant to slap the other in the face with what the two of them should be but weren't because they hated one another . . . not that Stefan hated Damon right now. He couldn't feel a thing. He was just running on pure id and enjoying what amused him in the moment. Right now that was annoying Damon, and he was using me to do it. 

Damon went to follow us out the door and Stefan put his hand against his chest to push him back. "What are you going to go to school with us? Aren't you a little old for that? They aren't going to let the creepy older brother of one of their students follow her around all day . . . Or do you want to ruin this for her the way you - " 

He hissed in pain before looking down at his side and the stake I'd just jabbed into it. His eyes flashed red, and he turned to lunge at me, but was held back by Damon as I said, "Stop using me to torment him." Smirking, I added, "And go change your shirt. That's what looks ruined to me . . . I'm afraid I have to go now if I don't want to be late. Listen to Damon and find your own way there," before turning on my heel and making my way to my car. 

I tossed the bloody stake in the trunk, wiped my hand off with a towel I had in there, and picked up a fresh stake before holding it up, so Damon could see that I was only going to keep the one on me today. He smiled briefly before looking at his brother and rolling his eyes as Stefan pushed past him muttering something. Following him back into the house, he waved for me to go. I took that as half a 'see ya later' wave and half a 'go before he changes' wave, so I wasted no time in getting into my car, but I still wasn't fast enough.

I'd just finished putting on my sunglasses and was putting my key in the ignition when the passenger door opened, and in hopped another vampire. "You didn't think I'd let you leave without me, did you?"

Slowly, I turned my head to look at the blonde. _And what the hell do you think you're doing?_ Asking that probably wasn't a smart move . . . eh, probably smarter than what I did say. "Funny. I thought leaving you behind is what people did."

Reaching across the car to grab me by the front of my jacket faster than I anticipated, she pulled me to within a couple inches of her face. Her fangs were bared, eyes red, veins protruding across her face. "Listen to me, you little brat. Don't think for one second that I've forgotten what you did to me. You may be my brother's pet project for now, but he'll soon grow bored of you, and when he does, I intend to have my fun." 

I arched an eyebrow in response, and brought my hand up from the under the bottom of my seat. I'd kept a small stash of white oak ash in here when I was on my road trip and was glad to see it hadn't been touched. Opening my hand in her direction, I calmly blew the dust in her face, and she quickly let me go, as I asked, "Are you done?"

She screeched in pain, while her hands covered her face, and then she cried, "God! What did I ever do to you? Why are you so mean to me?"

That made me pause. Because I didn't want her to think I was weak? That made the most sense given the current circumstances. Because she was my practice dummy for the rest of the Original family? That made sense too, but it wasn't particularly nice. "I'm sorry." 

She sniffed and then peeked through her hands at me. "What?"

I shrugged a shoulder, while finally putting my key in the ignition. "You're right . . . I haven't been very nice. I guess I've just always thought of the Original vampires as these . . . gods, and all gods tend to do is find their amusement by toying with us mere mortals . . . If that's not you, then I apologize for thinking that I should let you know right off the bat that I won't let you walk all over me."

Okay, so it wasn't an actual apology, more of a conditional one. Watching me for a few moments, like she wanted to make sure I wasn't going to attack her again, she eventually brought her hands down from her face and pouted before saying, "You ruined my make up. Do you have any idea how long I spent making it look perfect this morning?"

"No." Maybe the question had been rhetorical. I sighed before rolling my eyes and saying, "If it makes you feel better, you still look flawless."

Her lips twitched into a smirk. "And what would you know about looking flawless? You look like a hobo."

I looked down at my clothes and frowned. "Hey, I'm clean. My clothes are clean . . . definitely not a hobo."

Tugging on my army jacket, she asked, "What about this monstrosity?"

"It's stylish in an offbeat kind of way . . . I mostly wear it to hide my weapons."

"You don't need weapons. You're going to school." 

I rolled my eyes before turning the key. "So I keep hearing . . . I guess we'll see." 

I put the car in reverse, but stomped on the brakes when she reached out to touch my hair. "And what is this?" 

"Don't touch me when I'm driving." 

I scowled at her from behind my sunglasses, but she seemed to take no note of it as she stared at the highlights. "Why is there purple in your hair?"

"Caroline thought it would look good, and it makes me look less like Elena."

She cattily replied, "Neither of you hold a candle to Tatia."

"I thought she was a doppleganger."

Rebekah's head turned in my direction. She knew I didn't know for sure, but she was trying to determine the harm in a definite answer. She must've decided there was none, because eventually she said, "She was."

"Then Elena looks identical to her, and I look more or less the same . . . now if our personalities influence how other people see us, then maybe . . . I have a wretched personality with people I meet, as you know, so - "

I was cut off by my back door opening as Stefan said, "Just with people you meet? I thought it was everybody."

I turned to look at him, the frustration evident on my face as I hissed, "What the fuck are you doing here? I told you to find your own way to school."

Touching his finger to the tip of my nose, he grinned as he said, "And I told you, this would be much more fun." 

Turning around in a huff and finally putting my car in reverse, so I could get the hell out of here, I grumbled, "You're the annoying brother I never wanted, you know that?"

"Ah, as opposed to the sister you do have, but who hates you . . . Oh she is going to love seeing you roll up into the parking lot with the two of us in your car . . . especially after what you did to her little friend the other night."

So that's the fun he was talking about. Sure, I could see how it would be fun for him. I didn't care. I was done trying with Elena. If and when she wanted a sister, my door would be open, but I wasn't going to let it get to me anymore . . . Oh who was I kidding? Of course I was, but I didn't have to show it. My lips tightened into a thin line before I shook my head and focused on the road, while Rebekah asked, "Which friend?"

Stefan answered for me. "The witch friend."

"Good." Looking at me, she said, "You leave that blonde vampire for me."

My brow furrowed before I glanced in her direction. "You mean Caroline? You're not going anywhere near her."

She shrugged before sitting back in her seat. "Who said anything about going near her? There's plenty I can do from far away." That so wasn't happening, but I was driving and not about to wreck my car by getting into it with the Original in my passenger seat. She flicked a look at Stefan in the back. "What'd she do to the witch?"

Stefan grinned. "Stole her powers."

I looked at him in the rearview mirror. "I did not steal them. It's not like I have them or sold them on to someone else. Maybe I got her kicked out of the witch club for the time being, but that's because she doesn't deserve any of her powers. If she hadn't killed me - "

She seemed disappointed. "It didn't take." 

I threw her a look, like 'obviously,' it didn't, and she flicked her gaze back to Stefan as Stefan said, "Her ring brings her back if something supernatural kills her."

Working through it, Rebekah said, "So the witch killed Eve, loses her powers, and that somehow equates to Eve stealing them?"

"Eve pushed Bonnie into it, specifically, so Bonnie would lose her powers."

"It wouldn't have worked if Eve wasn't really an innocent by the standards set forth in the natural rules that govern magic . . . It was a test this witch failed."

Tapping the back of her seat, Stefan sat back before saying, "Well don't go saying that to them. Trust me. It's much better this way. We get to sit back and enjoy the show . . . direct it the way we want it to go . . . it's going to be fun."

And how did that fun of his start? Immediately after we got out of the car, he slung his arm around my shoulders, the way he had at the house, and Rebekah linked her arm through mine. To anyone not next to us, it'd look like we were the best of friends. Anyone near us would have seen me trying to shrug them off, but they were a lot stronger than me. If I wanted them to get off of me, I'd have to resort to more extreme measures . . . measures that would get me arrested as well as kicked out of school if anyone saw me do them. What was so wrong with the shadows again? 

I caught a glimpse of Matt walking with Tyler, and the look he gave me was full of disgust. Nudging Rebekah, I whispered, "Being seen with me is going to hurt your reputation." I tilted my head in Matt's direction and added, "And not just with the people who sort of know me. Look around. Nobody here likes me." She took a survey of the school population standing around outside and the people who were flicking looks in our direction . . . half out of curiosity and half because of rumors that had snowballed out of control during the summer. "On the other hand, me being seen with you might boost mine, because they know nothing about you, and that gives you a blank slate, so - " 

She let go of my arm to walk ahead of us saying, "Is that my brother's hybrid? He looks hungry. Think I have just what he needs . . . see you two later."

One down. One to go. I looked at Stefan, and my eyes narrowed, which only made him snort. "I'm not going to be that easy to shake."

And he wasn't. The one good thing he did that day was make me so distracted that I barely registered that we'd gone through the school doors until we were walking down the hall. He followed me right to the office where I got my schedule and really, I'd had no idea where the office was, so it was like he'd guided me there. Of course it was so he could try and compel the woman behind the desk into believing I was a troublemaker, but thankfully, Damon had gotten to her first, which meant she only thought the best of me, and Stefan's compulsion couldn't override his.

Then he went off to torment Elena, and instead of using my chance to break away from him, I felt like I had to step in and make him leave her alone. Anyone with eyes could see she was scared of him. I noted the scarf she was sporting, and for the first time, wondered if Stefan was the one that'd hurt her the other night. Sure Klaus had probably told him to do it, but it was by Stefan's hand . . . he was not going to want to feel any of the emotions that went along with that, which meant that getting him to flip his switch back was going to be an uphill battle.

He skulked off, probably to go attack someone, and I felt like I had to go with him to keep an eye on him, but paused when I heard a voice behind me say, "You didn't have to do that. I can take care of myself."

She sounded conflicted, like maybe she wanted to say thanks, but couldn't bring herself to do that with me, so it came out sounding like I was being scolded without a whole lot of heat behind it. Maybe she just didn't want me to think she was weak the way I hadn't wanted Rebekah to think I was? I glanced at Elena over my shoulder and muttered, "Maybe . . . I guess I need to see that to believe it, and someone has to keep him in line. This place is full of dark corners, hiding spots, and warm bodies . . . I've gotta go babysit. Maybe I'll see you in class," before heading out the door he'd exited. 

I'd been detained long enough to lose him, and then the warning bell for class rang, and I was switching gears. I needed to go to class . . . but what about Stefan? Maybe he'd just be in whatever class Elena was in to torment her further. I looked down at my schedule . . . History? Where the hell was that room? I felt an arm wrap through mine and was pulled down the hall. "Come on, we're going to be late."

I glanced at Rebekah. "How do you know where we're going?"

"How do you not?"

I gave her a confused look. "Because I've never gone to school a day in my life. I don't know what the hell I'm doing."

She smirked. "Good to know . . . so if I told you to go right down this hall and out the doors at the end?"

I responded unsurely, "I'd say you were sending me outside?"

"Yep, and my advice would be to keep on walking. These kids will eat you alive."

"Probably . . . Could always give me directions to the nearest closet. I wouldn't mind the solitude."

"And miss the look on people's faces when they see us walk into class together? Not a chance."

The corner of my mouth slid down into a slight frown. "You knew I said it to get - "

"Me to leave your side? Of course I did . . . I can sense deception with an uncanny ability. My brother says it borders on the supernatural - Although, you weren't being dishonest in what you said about your classmates' opinion of you, just your intentions behind why you were informing me of it."

"Finally, your 1000 years of experience pays some kind of dividend that sounds useful."

"Useful to who? To you? Don't flatter yourself."

"I have my own sense of intuition that serves me just fine, thank you very much. I meant to you." 

"Thinking you can antagonize me and get away with it tells me your intuition isn't all that strong."

"Hm . . . you know what my intuition is telling me about you right now?"

"No, and I don't care." I shrugged a shoulder, and she glanced at me before saying, "Fine. What is it telling you?"

"That you've missed out on the last 90 years, so you're as out of your depth here as I am. And while you sympathize with your brother's efforts to create hybrids, so he doesn't feel alone, you can't help but ask yourself, 'What about me? What about the rest of us? We're your family. Why aren't we good enough?'"

Her lips tightened as did her hold on my arm before she replied. "Has anyone told you that mouth of yours should stay shut? You wouldn't piss people off half as much if it did."

"Hey, you asked. I just gave you the answer as I see it . . . Except I didn't also say that I think your brother will eventually get bored with his hybrids, so you have nothing to worry about."

She loosened her hold and shook her head. "I wish. You haven't spent the last 1000 years hearing him do nothing but talk about it."

A few weeks of it had been more than enough for me. "Yeah, I still don't think it's going to give him what he wants. It may take a year or 50 before he realizes that, but he will eventually. Him getting his hybrids might just be the best thing that's happened to you and your siblings, because when he realizes hybrids aren't what he expected them to be, he'll appreciate you guys more. Not that he doesn't appreciate you now. He just - "

"You think you know my brother?" I looked at her again, and the anger she had for me was once again apparent on her face as she said, "You know nothing."

"I know him well enough to say that instead of shooting you in the ass, I should've said 'thanks for helping me out in Chicago,' and then shot you in the ass . . . My brain wasn't quite working past hunting you though."

Leaning closer, she smirked. "No thanks required. What you really should have done is apologize. You were supposed to die in Chicago . . . they were supposed to drag my brother's new toy out and kill her in the alley."

I replied with a sickly sweet smile of my own. "You know, I'm curious. I mean it's obvious that you are so used to having your brother look out for you that you've forgotten how to do it for yourself . . . maybe you never could. Can you do it now that you're on you're own?" Her grip on my arm tightened as the bell for class rang, and my grin became more wicked as I said, "And don't tell me that the Queen of Intuition was completely oblivious to what would happen once I was dragged out of that bar . . . You knew. You just didn't care. You were sloppy, and it literally bit you in the ass." 

She stopped and pushed me into the lockers by my throat. "It's not a mistake I'll make again."

I choked out a laugh. "Well, at least you learned something from it . . . Oh, and here's something else you should know." My smile fell as I pushed the tip of my dagger under her ribcage. It didn't break the skin, but she could definitely feel it. "That dagger your brother has with your name on it? I have one too. I used it on Elijah for a while, so I know it works, and if I have to use it on you, you're staying down for good this time." 

Alright, so I might've lied to Damon about just having a stake, but in fairness, he should've known I wouldn't go to school with an Original without a dagger that could stop her if and when needed. I'd only planned to keep it just in case a situation like this arose. Besides, thanks to Stefan, Rebekah now knew that she could kill me without her brother punishing her, because the ring would bring me back, and I'd be just fine . . . even healed from any wounds I may have sustained, the way I'd healed from Stefan's bites. I wasn't looking to die again. I didn't particularly like the experience, and it had upset Damon. I couldn't do that to him again so soon after having done it to him once already.

She backed off a bit. "You're bluffing."

"Am I, oh Queen? Or are you starting to see the appeal of my jacket now?" 

She let me go and grabbed my arm to continue dragging me to class. "I hate you."

"Join the club."

"I'm going to make your life a living Hell."

"If you could start by giving me the silent treatment, that would be just great."

Rebekah pulled me in through the door of a room with a smile plastered on her face. Apparently, they took those bells seriously around here, because the teacher had already started her lesson. Stefan was already in here. He seemed amused. Rebekah introduced us with an air of superiority, "I'm Rebekah . . . This is my friend Eve . . . We're you're new students," and went to take a seat directly in front of Elena. She told the kid sitting in front of Stefan to move, which he did immediately, because she compelled him, and then I was awkwardly taking that desk as my own. What else was I supposed to do? Go sit in one of the empty seats by the window? Yeah, I probably should've done that, but I didn't particularly want to be the center of attention for longer than I had to be. 

While pulling out my notebook, I tried not to think about how I now had Rebekah to my left, Stefan behind me, and could feel the looks I was getting from Elena and Caroline as Stefan leaned forward to whisper, "Told you this was going to be fun."


	22. So Much for Normal

My only respite that day came unexpectedly. I was stealthily tracking Stefan, the looser canon of the evil duo, when my arm was grabbed, and I was pulled into a small alcove of the hall. "Hey, can we talk?"

Looking down the hall, so I could keep my eyes on Stefan, I distractedly answered, "Sorry, Jeremy . . . Now's not really - "

"Trust me. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important." At his tone, I finally forced myself to look at him. Yeah, he wasn't happy with me. 

"Jeremy - "

"Save it. I know what you did."

Taking a deep breath, I tried to remember what Damon had said to me about apologizing. "Uh huh . . . and was anyone's reaction to get mad at you just because you were wearing one of these when Damon killed you?" I raised my hand to show him my ring that matched his, and his shoulders dropped.

"I wasn't playing mind games with him and telling him to do it."

 _No, you were trying to protect your sister. I just had my feelings hurt. Remember not to apologize._ "Uh, I didn't tell Bonnie to do it either. It wasn't even on the list of options I gave her . . . All I did was make her think I was taking her powers, and she reacted by killing me with said powers."

His head tilted to the side, like he was listening to someone, and then he looked at the empty space. "Yeah, I know Bonnie's being punished for . . . Being an innocent doesn't mean she was innocent. All it means is - Fine whatever." Turning his attention back on me, he said, "We have a problem."

 _So much for normal. I just don't think that's going to work out the way you want, Damon._ I looked at the empty space next to Jeremy and gave a small wave. "Hi Anna." Glancing at Jeremy, I asked, "And what's the problem?"

"Vicki."

"Are you still seeing her?"

"Yes, but she doesn't know I can, and it's not me she's talking to now. It's Matt."

"Matt? That doesn't make any sense."

"He died the other night . . . in the pool. Bonnie brought him back using CPR."

"Even so, it's not like people who die and come back with CPR instead of magic can just start seeing dead people. Whatever was giving her a power boost before is still giving her one."

He looked down at his invisible girlfriend and sighed. "Anna says you should know that I heard Vicki say that the person helping her is a witch."

Ah. "Well, it makes sense. We already suspected that whatever was doing it was using dark magic, and a witch is the only thing I can think of that would have that kind of power."

"Yeah, but Anna also wants me to tell you what I heard Elena say to Caroline after I got back."

"Got back from where?"

He hesitated before getting a nudge from Anna and said, "Katherine took me. She and Damon needed Anna to find out where Mikael is. After Damon came back here, Katherine and I found Mikael. He's a vampire that hunts vampires. He was desiccated in a tomb and had all these chains on him. We couldn't wake him up, but I had to come back for school, so - "

"Katherine's there with him alone?"

Putting his hand out, he was quick to say, "She'll be fine."

I realized my hand had gone to my phone. She'd given me her number when they'd left the other night in case Klaus showed up in town and I couldn't get a hold of Damon. Why I felt the need to call her, I didn't know. I guess I may not trust her, but she was more of a sister to me than my real sister was. Oh, that was a bad thought. I hated it as soon as I thought it. 

I mean, I knew she was always using people, and I did not trust her in the slightest. She was going to find a way to screw me over at some point more than she already had, and yet she's also the only reason that Damon found out I was in Chicago. I'm sure she'd had ulterior motives for that, but still. I thought of the picture she'd kept and wondered if I should burn it, so I didn't get roped in by her. 

Seeing the agitated look that came over my face, Jeremy looked concerned, but decided to steer clear of that one. "Anyway, Vicki's ally on the Other Side is telling Vicki that she knows how to bring Vicki back, and I heard Vicki tell Matt that she needs his help. He's not a witch, but apparently it doesn't take one. He can do it himself."

I thought for a moment and said, "Maybe because he's a blood relative?"

Jeremy looked like he thought that made sense, and glanced down over his shoulder to listen to what Anna had to say about it. "Anna says that no matter how it's done, bringing a spirit back would upset the natural balance in a big way, and we should be worried about what Vicki has promised this witch in return."

Yeah, she made a valid point. "Anna's right . . . This witch isn't helping Vicki out of the kindness of her heart. If she's using dark magic, then she's not a particularly good witch. The fact that she can even use her magic in death, says she's powerful, but not powerful enough to do something she wants on her own. She needs someone on this side for the kind of magical power required to do whatever it is . . . And I'm guessing this witch is still hiding her presence from Anna?" Jeremy looked down at her and nodded. "Then either talk to Vicki or Matt . . . whichever one you think might listen. Matt's not going to want to pass up a chance to get his sister back, but I'm guessing Vicki's even more determined not to stay where she is if it's as lonely as Anna makes it seem. Loneliness leads to introspection, and from what I've heard, Vicki doesn't sound like the kind of girl who likes to think about her problems. She'd rather avoid them at all costs." I heard a bell ring and sighed. "I have to get to class . . . And Anna, I haven't forgotten about helping you find your Mom."

"She knows you've been busy." 

I looked at the empty space where she now stood and nodded. "I have, but that's no excuse. I, uh . . . I'm not a fan, but I might know a witch or two that could help now that I've sort of screwed up Bonnie being able to use magic. We'll go with the plan we had. After school, you could maybe go with Jeremy to find something of your mother's, so the witch can use it to connect with her . . . maybe just don't bring up this dead witch on the other side to the witch I send you to . . . Living or dead, I'm guessing witches tend to stick with their own."

"She says thanks . . . and she won't tell a soul. She knows a little better than you how bad it would be."

I'd gone to leave, but stopped and looked at him. He shrugged. "She wants you to know, she's not a creep. After we got back, she heard what happened and went to check on you . . . And she can't speak for all dead folks, but she won't say a word to anyone including me."

My eyes widened slightly. She had heard Damon and I talking about Klaus. Jeremy laughed. "I'm going to have to mark this day down in my calendar. I'm guessing not many people have seen you surprised."

I turned around with a grumble, "None that are alive to tell the tale."

Catching up with me, he laughed again. "So does that mean only the dead can?"

It brought a genuine smile to my face. "Yeah, I suppose it does."

He opened his mouth to say something in response, but was cut off by a feminine voice down the hall. "Jeremy?" I looked over and there was Bonnie, but she wasn't looking at me. She was looking at him with betrayal in her eyes. Might as well have said, 'How could you?' before she turned and walked away from us, Jeremy quick on her trail. I felt bad, not just because of what I did to her, but also because it would appear that my cousin was off limits just like Caroline was. It was limiting my options. 

What was I supposed to do? Hang out with the people they considered, 'bad guys?' Was that my place? No, I wouldn't let them make me believe I was worse than I was. I was somewhere in the middle with some 'bad guys' hating me, other's that I'd never trust, but who liked me well enough, and one anti-hero who claimed to love me. The 'good guys' would continue to dislike me and think I was 'bad,' but not all of them did. I just couldn't be friends with the ones who didn't. 

They already had lives. I was just starting mine. It wasn't right for me to bulldoze the relationships that were important to them and well established just so I had someone to talk to other than Damon . . . and it wasn't right for me to always rely on him. I was stronger than that. And it wasn't right to put that responsibility on his shoulders either . . . I'd just go back to being used to a lot of alone time.

Alone time that I really quite enjoyed in the band class I had next and alone time that I was planning on enjoying at lunch. I'd found a tree to sit under. It shielded me from the sun. If I sat back against it, the trunk was thick enough to protect my back. If I faced away from the school, you couldn't see me unless you walked past. It was pretty ideal until it wasn't. Without having to look, I knew who'd walked up behind me to the right. Being alone doesn't mean not being aware of your surroundings. In fact, you're more likely to be aware of everything going on around you. "Stefan."

Sitting next to me, Stefan asked, "Where'd you go? Here I've been waiting for my little buddy to drive a stake in my back . . . even dropped a body I was sure you'd find, but nothing."

I sighed before looking at him and trying to determine if he was being honest about the dead body . . . probably. Whoever it was is probably just as dead as the people that'd been compelled to kidnap me in Chicago. I'd thought about it during my last class. I was about 50/50 on it, because Elena had been there. Damon wouldn't have wanted to kill them if it messed with her beliefs that he could be all that she thought he could be, but they were compelled to kill me, and they wouldn't stop until that task was complete . . . maybe he just knocked them out, but when they woke up they still would've been compelled. 

Maybe they were still wandering around Chicago looking for me. They'd drop out of college or lose their jobs. Eventually, they'd become one of the other homeless people wandering around the city, but with one thing on their mind. _'Must kill Eve Gilbert'_. Years from now, they might still be searching. Death would be better than that, so I sort of hoped Damon killed them, because there's no way that Rebekah would undo her compulsion now. Did I feel guilty about any of it? Not one bit. It may have been for me, but I didn't do it. 

Stefan waved his hand in front of my face and asked, "Are you ignoring me now?"

"Nope. To ignore you would mean that I care enough to ignore you . . . I don't. I'm just thinking."

He grinned, like my remarks breathed some life back into him. It was much more fun for him if he got some kind of annoyed response from me. It was something I could use. If he was getting what he needed to keep himself entertained by bothering me, he wasn't going to Elena or anyone else to get his jollies. "You can play at not caring all you want. I know I have you beat."

"Mm . . . why because you have a nifty switch to do the hard work for you? Not so easy to flip it back though, is it? Wanna see how mine works?" I lifted my finger, like I was flicking a light switch and said, "On, off, on, off . . . On. You don't want to be anywhere near me when it's really off."

Bopping me on the nose again with his finger, he said, "If I were anyone else, maybe, but I know your weakness."

"What's that?"

He smiled. "My brother. You won't kill me because of him."

No point in denying it. He wouldn't be sitting here if that weren't true. "True. There are lots of ways I could hurt you without killing you though. I'm sure he'd understand."

"Cute . . . How's your first day going?"

Again, I appraised him. He didn't really want to know beyond that it was a shitty day. That's what would make him happy in as much as he could be happy . . . amused was really the only way to describe it - instant gratification, not true happiness. His emotions may not be working, but his mind was. I bit my bottom lip, while my eyes narrowed in thought. Leaning closer, I asked, "What do you know about witches?"

He waved his hand in boredom. "I'm tired of hearing about Bonnie."

"It's not Bonnie . . . It's Vicki."

"Vicki's dead."

"Yeah, but she's still a problem."

That almost got his attention, but I'd need to sweeten the deal to get him truly interested. "How?"

"When Matt died in the pool, he came back being able to see her."

He tongued the inside of his cheek, while his brow furrowed in thought. "That shouldn't happen."

Sitting closer, I nodded. "I know . . . She's getting help from a witch on the other side to boost her power, and this witch is telling Vicki that she can come back if she has help on our side, which Matt is totally going to want to do."

"Why should I care?"

I smiled at successfully baiting his interest. "Why did Matt die in the first place?" Stefan was there. I wasn't. Neither were Jeremy or Anna, and it seemed like there was a piece of the puzzle I was missing.

"To get answers from the great beyond."

I rolled my eyes. "You're going to have to do better than that."

"I don't know. Klaus told Bonnie to figure out how to make his hybrid. Matt came back with the answer." His brow creased again. "Or the opposite of the answer . . . He said to make hybrids, Klaus had to kill the doppleganger."

"I'm guessing Vicki gave him the message." Stefan didn't immediately say anything, and I said more to myself than him, "It's not important if you don't know. I'm going to assume that since Matt's seeing Vicki now, he saw her then, and how would she know the answer about hybrids if she wasn't getting it from - "

Rolling through his memories, Stefan said, "The Original Witch . . . that's what I heard. I don't know who said it, but I definitely remember hearing somebody say it."

Original Witch? Who the hell was that? She was dead. She'd had her chance. She needed to stop trying to fuck up this side of the divide. I'd figure that out later. "So, why you should care is that if this same Original Witch is still getting involved through Vicki, and if Vicki wants to come back - "

"I should kill Matt to keep that from happening, so it doesn't become my problem." Patting me on the shoulder, he smirked as he got to his feet. "Great. Thanks for the help, little buddy." 

Unable to stop him by stabbing him in the foot or knee, pretty much anywhere around all these people, I quickly lunged forward to wrap my arms around his leg. He looked down at me with another amused grin. "You keep this up, Evie, and people will start to talk." 

I frowned up at him. "I told you not to call me that . . . and you can't kill Matt."

"And why not? If the only person who can see Vicki dies, then it's problem solved."

Wow. So glad I didn't tell him about Jeremy now. "Not necessarily . . . people die every day in hospitals and then come back. If she has as much power backing her as she seems to have, Vicki will just latch onto one of those people and scare them or annoy them into doing what she wants. You're supposed to be doing whatever Klaus compelled you to do. How are you going to do that and monitor everyone who dies and then comes back in every hospital in a 50 mile radius . . . maybe further? We know who Vicki's talking to at the moment, so it's contained. The second you kill him, it won't be."

Crouching down to look at me, he asked, "So, what do you propose I do?"

"See if Rebekah knows anything about this Original Witch and keep an eye on Matt. Prevent him from doing anything stupid."

"I can't watch Matt and Elena."

I rolled my eyes. "I'll watch Elena. You watch the threat, which isn't Matt, but Vicki. You can hear what Matt's saying a hell of a lot better than I can. You can figure out what she's saying to him when he thinks nobody is around." 

"Or I could lock him up and throw away the key."

He could do that except Vicki would just go to Jeremy and tell him what happened. Jeremy would then find a way to save Matt, and then he'd be in Stefan's line of fire. I had to talk Stefan out of that by using this flipped switch against him. "I don't know . . . You don't want him dead, because Vicki would just go to someone else. That means you could throw away the key, but you'd still have to feed him and give him water . . . basically take care of him all on your lonesome."

"You'll do it."

 _Like hell I will. Do a better job of convincing him, Eve._ Sounding demure, I said, "I can barely take care of myself, and you trust me to do it? I'll forget, and he'll die . . . If you lock him up, he'll be your responsibility."

"I'll remind you."

"Then it's basically like you're still taking care of him, because you'll have to think about him enough to remind me."

He growled in frustration. "Why'd you tell me any of this at all?" 

_Because now you'll be preoccupied with this and won't keep trying to intimidate or annoy everyone here. Maybe even save some lives?_ I shrugged before letting him go and getting to my feet. "Just trying to help."

Grabbing my arm to stop me from walking around him, he growled, "I don't believe that for a second."

I smirked before poking him in the chest with my finger. "See, you're smarter than Rebekah gives you credit for being." Stepping away from him, I smiled again when he followed me asking, "What's she been saying?"

"She doesn't have to say a thing. It's obvious she doesn't think you're up to the job of protecting Elena. Why else would she have come to school when looking out for Elena is supposed to be your job?" Or so he told Damon. I was seriously starting to question that with as much time as he spent annoying me. 

"I know what you're doing." _Setting Mothra loose on Godzilla? Winding you up in knots? Giving you a taste of your own medicine?_ "Divide and conquer won't work."

"That's adorable. You actually think she's on your side . . . your ally? She is so much stronger than you. She doesn't need allies. The second she gets tired of this new and improved Stefan, she'll put you down . . . Klaus doesn't care about you. All he needs is somebody to watch Elena. I'm pretty sure Rebekah can do that on her own, or I can."

"Where are you going?"

"Class."

"Which one?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm coming too, since I'm not leaving you out of my sight, and you have no idea where you're going."

"You're not leaving me out of your sight, huh?"

"Nope. See, I think you're - "

I stopped and abruptly turned to look at him. "I'm what?"

He met my look head on with an intensity that would've had anyone else concerned for their well-being. "Tricky."

I smiled. "Is that the best you can do? Maybe you're not smarter than she thinks . . . Let me know when you come up with something better."

I winked before turning away from him, and quickly found myself pushed up against a locker for the second time today. I held my breath when I met his eyes. Was that anger, like a genuine flash of anger? It made me feel hope rather than fear. "A manipulative bitch? Channeling your inner Katherine? Take your pick." 

I had to keep needling him. I brought my hand up between us and lifted three of my fingers. Dropping the ring finger, I said, "Dead witch." Dropping my forefinger, I said, "Elena," and smiled at the middle finger still sticking up at him. "Or me . . . you pick."

I went to duck under his arm, and he grabbed me by the back of my jacket to pull me back in front of him. "I'm willing to bet there is no dead witch, and Rebekah can watch Elena. I think it's more important to know what you're planning."

 _Did Klaus tell you to protect me without letting anyone know, so I can protect Elena? Did our little death match make him reconsider having you do it?_ My eyes widened in mock-delight as I said, "Shirking your responsibilities . . . what's that going to do to the electric dog collar, Klaus has implanted in your brain? Are you going to short-circuit? Or are you supposed to be watching someone else?" He didn't immediately answer that, and I smirked. "Maybe he'll just kill you after he finds out you're not very good at keeping secrets even after you've been compelled to keep them . . . Why not save him the trouble?" 

The stake I had up my sleeve pierced into the tenderest part of his side, and he lunged forward before slamming his hand against the locker next to my head so hard it dented beyond repair. He'd murder me if he could. If Klaus hadn't compelled him to protect me, then I was fairly certain he'd compelled him not to kill me and possibly to keep an eye on me to keep me from doing anything foolish. The frustration of wanting to kill me but being unable to do it might make it easier to get Stefan angry enough to flip that switch back. 

"Is everything okay here . . . Eve?"

I recognized the voice and immediately backed down. She was standing back a bit, and I'm sure she meant well, but he could kill her faster than I could stop him. Pulling the stake out of his side and making sure it was once again hidden in my sleeve, I nodded without taking my eyes off of Stefan. "Fine, Caroline. We were just having a little chat . . . discussing the pros and cons of him taking Physics . . . He's still undecided."

He shook his head, the same intense 'I'm going to kill you,' look on his face as he replied, "Not so undecided." He flashed me a smile he didn't mean before saying, "I believe that's my next class," as he threw his arm around my shoulders in a way that almost felt like a headlock as he dragged me in the other direction. Muttering just loud enough for me to hear, he said, "You stake me again, and I'll kill the nearest person to us." _And why not me?_ Yeah, I was starting to seriously believe Klaus had compelled him not to kill me.

"Maybe I'll just use you to start killing people I don't like. Use the stake as a button to make you do my bidding, like the good little minion you are."

I heard him growl and smirked. If Elena couldn't get through with love, I was beginning to think I might be able to do it with hate.


	23. The Judge, Jury, and Executioner

I walked into the bathroom to take a 2-minute break from Stefan. Minding him was beginning to feel like a full-time job. It certainly made today feel a lot slower. I splashed some water on my hands to wash away his blood from when I'd stabbed him before my last class and rolled up my sleeves to splash more on my forearms and neck, so I could use the cool water to try and calm me down. As infuriating as I was being to him, he was being the same to me, which made me being level headed that much harder to maintain for long periods of time. I needed a clear mind and not to be ruled by emotions if I was going to get through this intact, and that was on top of the actual stresses involved with sitting in regimented classes and trying learn, while surrounded by people I didn't know. 

Resting my palms flat on the counter in front of me, I closed my eyes and forced myself to take calm slow breathes until I could get my heartbeat back under control. I heard the door open and thought nothing of it. The hair on the back of my neck didn't stand on end, which meant a vampire wasn't present. Stefan might be waiting out there for me to come out, but he hadn't sent Rebekah in here after me. I had no idea where she was. _One problem at a time. One more class to go. Then you're hanging out in your room all night to decompress._

I reached forward to grab a paper towel, so I could dry myself and looked in the mirror to find three faces I didn't want to see behind me. _Well, fuck. Instincts, you're letting me down . . . Not really. She may be a vampire, but you clearly don't think she's a threat . . . uh, the witch standing next to her tried to kill me . . . But she's not exactly a threat anymore is she?_ Bonnie might have been glaring daggers at me, but Caroline stood in the middle, arms crossed, like she was about to give me a lecture, so that's where my focus went, and she took it as her cue to speak. "What's going on, Eve?"

Using the paper towel to dry my forearms, I shrugged a shoulder, while saying, "Taking a breather. Is that so unusual?"

Her arms unfolded. "It is for you. Why are you acting so weird?"

Balling the paper towel up and throwing it in the trash without having to look to know I made it, I turned to look at her. "I'm gonna need more than that . . . How exactly am I - "

"You're ignoring me for one."

"I'm not ignoring you. I've spoken to you both times that you've spoken to me."

"Fine, then you're avoiding me. I've hardly seen you today."

I gave her a cool response. "Why would I avoid you? You're not a friend. You're not an enemy. I'm just getting on with my day."

She stomped her foot in annoyance. "Stop it! Why is it so hard for you to just behave? I haven't done anything to you, so - "

"Nope."

She immediately deflated. "I haven't?"

I shook my head. The fact that she thought she had made me a little sad. Didn't she remember the other night at all, or had she thought I was kidding about not being her friend anymore? "No . . . So, are we done here, or - "

I went to leave, and Elena stepped forward. "Why did you bring Stefan and Rebekah to school this morning?"

Exhaling a humorless laugh, I shook my head, while reaching for the door. "Like I had much of choice."

"If you hate it so much, then why have you been with one or both of them all day?" At the tone of her voice, I turned to look back at her, and yeah, Elena was angry about something. 

I smirked before turning on a tap to muffle our conversation from prying ears outside the door and told her the truth. "It's all part of their diabolical plan to make my life a living Hell."

"And that plan includes lots of touching, does it?"

I started to answer without thinking. "Yeah, it seems to - " _Wait a second._ She wasn't talking about Rebekah in the slightest. She was jealous. "Are you freaking kidding me?" Stepping towards her, I pointed back towards the door while loudly whispering so he wouldn't hear. "If you think you can handle it, be me guest. Take him off my hands. You'd be doing me a huge fucking favor if you did."

Putting her hand on Elena's shoulder, Caroline said, "See, I told you something was wrong. I saw them fighting. It's like she's his prisoner."

Almost ignoring it, like a little detective that wanted something confirmed, Elena said, "Or he's hers."

I wasn't offended by it. She really seemed to be on a fact finding mission rather than a crusade where she thought she already had the answers. She was pushing me the way I pushed other people to find out what I wanted. Lifting a shoulder, I answered honestly. "If he's focused on me, he'll leave everyone else alone . . . I think he might've killed someone earlier to antagonize me when he couldn't find me during band. He's like a murdering toddler right now. You have to keep him occupied at all times, or there will be a lot of death and destruction."

"And you live with him."

Again, not an accusation. Almost a question of if I was going to be all right. It caught me slightly off guard. "Damon's making sure he can't get in my room . . . Good thing too. He's a complete slob now. He left 2 bodies and 4 bloody girls for Damon to clean up this morning, because he was bored last night."

"That's not funny."

"I didn't say it was."

She took a shaky breath as her eyes floated over my shoulder to look at the door. "He really did that?"

"Did he really bite you?" Her eyes came back to me, and she unwrapped the scarf for me to see the bite marks before quickly covering back up. "You're scared of him now." It was a statement on my part, and she didn't answer, but her eyes said, 'yes.' I gave her a nod to let her know I understood. "Then let me handle it . . . I'm working on flipping his switch. He still won't be him . . . more like the dick you met in Chicago, but the Stefan you know will be more accessible, which is a start."

"I can't ask you to do that."

"Can't ask me not do it either. I - "

"Let her do what she wants . . . She's getting what she deserves, and this is just the start. Karma is a bitch."

My eyes went to Bonnie, and my demeanor immediately went from older sister to antagonistic. "Karma for what?" Her eyes gleamed in unshed tears of rage. Stepping to the right of Elena, so I could stand toe-to-toe with Bonnie, I asked, "Karma for what?" again with the barely controlled anger I'd come in here to get away from for a little while. I'd had enough of all of this. I could take just about anything people threw at me up to a point. I'd had to learn to do that with my parents, but all that meant is that I'd developed poor coping techniques. I kept it all bottled up inside me with no outlet other than killing monsters to let it out. Sure, playing the piano helped calm that beast, but it never really made it go away, and I couldn't exactly kill anyone in this bathroom even though I'd reached my breaking point, so I finally let loose on everything I'd been thinking to the people who deserved it the most. 

"Karma for nobody in this room telling me that Klaus was here? Karma for getting to the school just in time to see them carry Elena out the door? Karma for thinking she was dead? Karma for letting Klaus know that I know his family's greatest weakness just so I could show him how serious I was about getting her body back? Karma - " 

"Why so you could burn it, like trash?"

"Bonnie, it is taking everything I have not to kill you right now, so shut your damn mouth and listen." 

"I don't know who you think you are, but - " 

"Bonnie, please." Bonnie and I looked in Elena's direction, and she turned her attention on me. "You wanted to bury me next to my parents, didn't you?" I wasn't quite expecting that or really know how she came to that conclusion, but I nodded, and she said, "That's what you did for John . . . gave him what he wanted?" She looked at Caroline instead of me, like Caroline, who'd stayed for the entire funeral, had told her that, and Caroline nodded. When Elena looked back at me, she asked, "Why were you fighting Stefan?"

"It was a penalty for letting Klaus know the Original family's secret. Klaus said if I beat him, I could have my car back, and we'd discuss me coming with him to protect you."

"Is that when you found out I was alive?"

"Uh, no I found that out when I was trying to convince him that I hadn't just killed his sister . . . I didn't really know if I had. It was an experiment that worked, but I didn't know how well. I just sort of thought that if the daggers didn't work permanently than this wouldn't."

Her eyes widened as she exclaimed, "You're an idiot, you know that?"

"Uh . . . not really. It worked, so - " 

"You could've killed his sister over what you thought was a dead body, and if you had, then he would've killed you and everyone else in this town."

"Nah, probably just me, Damon and Caroline. He knows I hate everyone else in this town."

"Eve!"

I sighed before looking at Caroline. "What?"

"You're not helping your case."

"And what case is that? Why do I have to defend myself for anything? Just because this is my first day of school, doesn't mean I'm an idiot. I'm smart . . . I had a good idea of what that dart would do when I shot her, and I was right . . . I talked him down. It was fine."

"Except with how angry he was at Stefan for lying to him, he decided having you two fight it out would take care of both his problems, and you were more than happy to play your part."

Looking at Bonnie I wondered why she was even here as I responded to what she'd said, "And Stefan wasn't?"

"He didn't have a choice. He has to do whatever Klaus tells him to do."

My shoulders dropped as I looked at Elena. She really didn't understand how this whole vampire thing worked at all, did she? "Actually it was his idea. Klaus didn't want to kill me. He was thinking of ways to get around it. Stefan said to stop wasting time, and he'd do it. It's Klaus that gave me a fighting chance by turning it into a competition and telling me Stefan had been compelled to flip his switch, so I could account for that."

"No, Stefan wouldn't - " 

I cut her off with an incredulous look. "Of course he would. Did you know that Stefan's called the The Ripper of Monterey?" She was hesitant to respond, so either she knew and didn't really know what that meant or had no idea, so I spelled it out for her. "That may not mean anything to you, but I grew up with stories about him and had no idea he was the guy I live with until the other night . . . Do you know why he's a legend? Because he slaughtered an entire migrant village that was about the size of Mystic Falls. I'm talking men, women, children . . . every last one of them. And he did it in one night." Looking at Bonnie, I said, "That is the monster you protected . . . It's who you'd rather see live than me . . . One bite is fine if you know how to take it. Two? Well, that's why you never let them bite you more than once . . . He was in a bad position, or that's what would have killed me, and I had to beat him. He needs to believe I can keep him in check, or he will run around thinking this town - this world - is his personal playground."

Looking at the three of them with a sigh, I shook my head and said, " There is so much more to this than any of you think . . . You're new at this. I'm not. Just because you're good doesn't mean you're always right." Turning my attention back on Bonnie, because I was still annoyed with her, I added, "So, yeah I'd say Karma is a bitch, but it's not me she's after right now . . . That Ripper out there in the hall . . . The Original Blonde that's his co-pilot . . . Klaus . . . This Mikael who is on his way to Mystic Falls . . . The Original dead witch that's helping Vicki convince Matt to bring her back, so she can do god knows what . . . Dealing with all of that is not my punishment for anything you chose to do to me with your powers . . . It's my life, my job, my responsibility. Nobody has to ask me to do it, and I don't have to like who I'm helping to do the right thing . . . I do it willingly because given my knowledge and talents, it would be wrong if I didn't . . . People would die. To do what needs to be done, I'm not good, and I never claimed to be . . . but I'm not all bad either." Looking at the other two, I said, "Now if you don't mind, I have to get back to my stalker, because if I don't, he's going to get bored, and right now, his humanity is what I'm concerned with saving . . . It'll save more lives in the long run."

I turned to leave, and Bonnie said, "You're such a hypocrite." I stopped without looking at her, and she said, "You punished me for saving his life? If you think he's so bad, you should've killed him, but you didn't because of Damon."

Still not looking at her, I said, "I didn't punish you for saving his life. I punished you because you chose his life over mine, and I didn't do anything wrong, so what does that say about you? And I am a hypocrite when it comes to who I do and do not kill, but I can own it. I know I'm not perfect . . . I could rationalize it and say that with Originals running around, hybrids being made as we speak, and all the rest, we need someone like him on our side . . . I could say that if he died, Damon would flip his switch, rip this town apart, and I wouldn't be able to do what was necessary to stop him . . . I - "

I stopped when she came around me to block me from getting to the door. "And why not? I mean he's a vampire. He's killed a lot of people too . . . the right thing would be to kill him, so why haven't you?"

"Right . . . So, next, I guess you'll say I should have killed my Mom too . . . Shouldn't have cried when she died? Shouldn't have cared when Rose was suffering an excruciating death?" Leaning closer to her, I said, "Humanity, Bonnie . . . Somehow, I've retained mine . . . You may not know this, but vampire hunters are as bad as the things they hunt. They take innocent people, carve them up, and leave them as bait. They think it's fun to prolong the hunt as long as possible to scare their prey, and yes, vampires do get scared . . . I've scared them myself. They're just like humans, except you can kill them and get by with it, because they're classed as monsters . . . Most vampire hunters get a high out of torture and draw out the deaths in order to find their next victim. Everything to them is black and white. There are no shades of gray. Vampire hunters kill their brothers, sisters, parents, lovers, anyone around them that turns. If I were like them, nobody in this room would still be alive . . . doppleganger whose blood can create hybrids, vampire, witch . . . and then of course, there's Stefan, Damon, Tyler . . . the list goes on. It's never ending, because there's always another monster and another excuse to kill in the name of what's right when it's really just masking pure hate. And Damon . . . he knows this. He knows it's not what would be best for me . . . He doesn't want me to become a human monster, and it's not an easy balancing act that I have to maintain, so yes, it may make me a hypocrite, but I'll take that over the alternative . . . and you really need to stop focusing on me and start thinking about what you did and why it is you've lost your powers, or you'll never get them back."

She took half a step back. "I can get them back?"

I bit the inside of my cheek before giving her a single nod. "Yep."

"How?"

"I thought I just said that. Stop focusing out and start focusing in."

"She didn't mean for it to sound like that." I rolled my eyes at Caroline's remark without letting her see. Pretty sure I did mean for it to sound the way it had.

Looking at Bonnie, I said, "You still have no idea what you really did, do you?"

"You shot me, and I had to defend myself from - "

Stepping closer to her, and looking more confused than angry, because how did she not understand this, I stated the obvious. "Bonnie, you killed me." It very much sounded like I was scolding her as I said, "I told you not to lose your temper. Your emotions for me got the better of you . . . You don't deserve your powers if that's what you do with them."

"No, I thought - "

"Bonnie, it's not up to me, but I do know that until you do some serious soul searching, no powers for you." Reaching for the door again, I asked, "Are we done?" and she stepped aside.

I stopped with a sigh once more when I heard Elena say, "Wait."

"You won't kill Stefan?" Looking back at her, I shook my head. "And Rebekah?"

"One problem at a time."

"Let us help."

"With what?"

She rolled her eyes in a way that was identical to the way I did it. "Bonnie will help with whatever you were talking about with Matt; Caroline will deal with Tyler, and I will help with Stefan. We'll deal with Rebekah after that. . . . and Klaus and Mikael . . . one problem at a time." I opened my mouth, and she cut me off. "I'm not taking no for an answer. You either let us help, or we'll do it without you." 

And get themselves killed? I don't think so. Ugh, did this mean I was going to have to start taking a more active role in babysitting them? Well, that was annoying. They were going to get in my way, weren't they? Of course they were, and I'd have to constantly defend whatever choices I made. Rolling my eyes, I grumbled, "Figure out somewhere to meet, and I'll find a way to sneak out. It won't do any good to discuss it at the Boarding House. We'll have two sets of nosey ears eavesdropping on everything."

"And you'll bring Damon?"

"Fine. Are we good? Done?" 

I looked at all of them and turned around in a huff before finally pulling the door open and walking right into Stefan, who gave Elena a pointed look, as he threw his arm around my shoulders and lead me down the hall. "What took so long?"

"Oh you know tedious high school conversations . . . my idea of Hell."


	24. The End of a Bad Week

"How much longer is this going to take?" 

I fixed a glare on Stefan, while wiping the dirt from my hands onto my jeans, so I could get a tighter grip on the tire iron. "It's like you don't understand the concept of 1 + 1 = 2." He didn't understand my point, and my eyebrows arched in annoyance. "Helping me change the tire would go a hell of a lot faster."

His hand flicked in a half-hearted attempt to wave that off as he continued to lean back against my car, like he thought he was a goddamn model who didn't have to do manual work, and looked away from me saying, "Nah, I don't want to do that."

"Well, then you're going to have to wait." I'd come out of the school to find all 4 tires on my car slashed and had to walk to the nearest garage to buy 4 new ones, which was expensive and annoying and took time, and I knew exactly who did it, or more precisely, who was behind it. The same person responsible for 'Slut,' now being scratched in the hood and doors of my car. Of course she hadn't done it herself, but she didn't even need to compel anyone to do this. It certainly fit with those rumors that had begun circulating in the last couple of days about how Elena really hated me because I crashed her Dad's funeral by stealing her boyfriend. After that, the rumors had started taking on an even darker tone. Rebekah had been busy even though I hadn't seen her much. . . Guess she was right about not needing to be anywhere near someone to make their life hell, and Stefan's plan was working, because the two of them were writing their own narrative, not that I think he even cared about that anymore. That was Monday. Today was Friday. He was all about the now. "Or you know, you could walk home."

"I'd rather not."

Finally, tightening the last lug nut, I stood and made my way around to the trunk asking, "Why is that?"

I wiped my hands on the bloody towel I had back there, thinking that I'd have to do something about the paint tomorrow and maybe talk to Damon about signing a lease over to me for the garage too, so I could keep my car somewhere the other two couldn't go. Once I did that, she was staying put. I think it might be better to walk to school for now. I wasn't going to let this happen again, but I wasn't going to let this get me down either. 

Honestly, aside from what happened to my car today, things were sort of going to plan. Damon finally figured out what was wrong with Tyler, and Caroline was dealing with him being sired bonded to Klaus. Sheriff Forbes had finally gotten the Founders Council to approve putting vervain in the town's water supply without telling them there was an Original here or even that there were vampires in Mystic Falls. All she'd had to do was tell them it would make a good deterrent for any vampires considering moving into the area. That meant Damon, Stefan, Caroline, and Tyler's secret was safe, and it meant that Stefan and Rebekah couldn't just compel random people to do their bidding, which ultimately meant that they had to do their own dirty work. 

Stefan's attention was on me at school and Damon at home. Rebekah's attention was on Caroline or Tyler. Bonnie was free to go with Jeremy to talk to Imelda, the witch I'd set them up with and were on the Matt/Vicki/Anna problems. Divide and conquer had to work tonight, because tonight we were finally doing something about Stefan, and that's where Elena came into it. 

She'd been stressed out all week. Every time Stefan was around her, she looked like she might break, because he was a complete and utter dick to her. Tonight was her big night. I was her back up. I really couldn't afford to be late, not that anything would get started until I apparently chauffeured Stefan there.

I walked around to the driver's side door, got in before he did, and pulled my door closed before looking at him as he slid into the passenger seat. "Well? Are you finally going to admit that Klaus compelled you to watch me, or are we going to continue this charade where you pretend like you're always around because bothering me is amusing for you?"

He threw me a short look, but his mind was somewhere else. "Are you going to tell me what you're planning?"

Of course, Elena wouldn't be needed tonight if I could just get him to flip his switch on my own. I know Klaus compelled him to turn it off, but he'd only said to turn it off, not to keep it off, so Stefan should be able to flip it back. There were times I'd thought I'd been close. I just wasn't sure. Putting my keys in the ignition, I ignored his question by saying, "I can't imagine how humiliating it must be for you to have to protect me considering how many times I've owned you . . . but I guess humility is something you could stand to learn. You don't even have to feel it . . . just learn that pretending you have it is a good way to survive."

"Hey, anytime you think you're up for a rematch."

"Nah, I've confronted you in all your iterations. You're boring now."

Leaning towards me, he smirked. "Or you know the next time I'll win."

"Nope. I've moved onto bigger and better things."

Narrowing his eyes in thought, he said, "You'll never beat Klaus."

"Not Klaus."

"Rebekah?"

"Nah, I'm thinking of putting her into your category. Nothing to prove there."

He sat back and observed me on the drive home, and it wasn't until we were pulling up to the Boarding House that he said, "Mikael?" I didn't answer and simply put my car into park before opening my door and getting out. He was next to me a second later on the way into the house. "You do realize that going after Mikael helps Klaus, right?" Yeah, I did, but Mikael was a vampire that hunted other vampires, and from what I'd gotten from Anna through Jeremy, I knew he was really old, like possibly as old as the Originals themselves. He was the worst of both worlds, vampire hunter and vampire. The vampires I knew didn't stand a chance against something like that. Katherine still wasn't answering her phone, and that told me all I needed to know about Mikael.

Walking through the door behind me, Stefan, still looking for a definite answer said, "You think that taking down the thing that scares Klaus is better than going after Klaus . . . So, what are you just gonna skip right over that rung in the ladder?" You know, vampires weren't invulnerable. I was beginning to think that sometimes even they needed to be protected from time to time. Protect the people who needed it from a worse threat than Klaus, and ingratiate myself more to Klaus, so I could negotiate Elena staying here under my protection? I smiled before looking at him. "Something like that." Heading to my room, I added, "Go get changed. Wouldn't want to show up at the bonfire wearing the same thing you wore to school today . . . how could you ever live with the embarrassment of that faux pas? Make it snappy. I want to be out of here before the She-Devil comes back and expects a lift."

I really only needed to grab a few weapons from my room, and then I was ready. Jeremy was going with Bonnie and Matt. Caroline was going with Elena and Tyler. Damon was making his own way there. When I got to the foyer, there was still no sign of Stefan, and I entertained myself by flicking my dagger up and making it stick in the ceiling. Taking a few steps back, I then rushed forward to try jumping high enough to grab it. I saw the volleyball team doing something like this when I was going to get tires for my car. Of course, they did it without the dagger, but I wondered if it was potentially a sport I could do that wasn't cheerleading. 

My frustration grew as my attempts at reacquiring my dagger failed. It's not like the ceilings in the hall were all that high. They weren't cathedral ceilings or anything, but they were higher than that stupid net had been, and they were high enough that I couldn't reach the dagger through conventional means and had to resort to sprinting at one of the beams in the wall, so I could spring off of it with my foot and propel myself towards the knife . . . got it one. Not bad, but then when it came to hunting I did that move to varying degrees quite a lot to jump over things, like walls, or onto things, like the roofs of houses. I really enjoyed it. I doubted very much that Mystic Falls had a parkour club. Maybe I should start one. I suspect Tyler would join. Who else? I went to throw the dagger up there again, but immediately stopped when I heard a voice at the top of the stairs ask, "What are you doing?"

"I, uh, " Hiding the dagger behind my back, I answered, "Seeing if I could be a volleyball player? I think I've decided to start a parkour club instead."

Licking his bottom lip before taking a deep breath, Stefan paused a beat before bounding down the stairs, and my eyes narrowed in suspicion for probably the 100th time this week. Was he trying not to laugh? Every move he made had me wondering if he was close to flipping his switch or already had. It was so hard to tell. Flipped or not, he was a dick to me either way. "One person, does not a club make, and if you start it nobody would join."

"Tyler might."

"No club you start is going to tear him away from football." Looking at my attire as he got to the bottom step, he said, "Why'd you tell me to get changed if you weren't going to do it? I mean, come on, Eve, you're wearing the same clothes you wore to change your tires . . . Would it kill you to put in a little effort? You're going to make me look bad."

Uh, the easiest way for me to make sure people knew I was me and not Elena in the dark was to wear the same thing I'd worn to school. My eyebrows rose as I turned away from him and headed to the door saying, "Like you care what anyone thinks of you. Come on, Grandpa . . . Let's get you to your bonfire with all the teenagers. You know, if I wanted to put in even the slightest bit of effort, I would have locked you in an old folks home on Sunday, because you have really been cramping my style at school all week."

Following me out the door, he said, "What are you talking about? I'm like the coolest kid in that high school."

"Sure you are . . . in the made up little fantasy world of Stefan. Little tip . . . nobody who calls themselves cool actually is."

"Like you'd know."

"What I know is that nobody likes being around you. You're like the smelly kid in class everyone tries not to sit by, and if anyone does have the misfortune of having to talk to you, they try to get away from you as fast as possible. That's not cool."

I was expecting a retort and got none. When I looked at him, he was covering his face with his hand. Was he trying to hide frustration or trying not to laugh? Maybe he was just coming to the decision he made. "I'm driving." Brushing the episode off, like it was nothing, and making my doubts overcome my hope, he looked at my car and then the garage before saying, "I'm not riding in the slut-mobile," and veered off in the direction of the garage. Were we taking the Porche? Nope. Guess it only made sense. This party was in the middle of the woods, which really only left his motorcycle, but how the hell was I supposed to get him to rehab on that if our plan worked? Well, this should be interesting.


	25. Bonfire Night

I rested against a tree on the outskirts of the party, watching, like some older sister unhappy that she had to chaperone. Was this supposed to be fun? With the fire and crappy music, it felt a little like a modern day, knock-off of some pagan ritual, or a debauchery celebration given up like an offering to Dionysus. Drunk kids were falling around the place, and being caught by their slightly more sober friends when they got a little too close to the fire. Others were making out or doing drugs. 

My Dad was right. I am more of a one-on-one kind of person. My campfire with Damon was miles more fun in my opinion . . . although this did provide me with an opportunity to study my peers from a closer perspective than through the lenses of binoculars or sitting next to them in class. There may be a large gathering here, but they were broken off into groups. Some groups were bigger than others. The larger groups of 7 or 8 seemed to have one or two people who had the attention of everyone else. I could never be those people. I could never be the person in the middle with all the attention, but I could never be one of the people who stood around them either . . . not a leader and not a follower, I guess. 

I glanced at the smaller groups of 4 to 5 people. Their dynamics seemed similar to the larger groups, but they had fewer people hoping to be desperately noticed by one of the more popular people. They were more intimate, more devoted to one another than the kids in the larger groups. The groups of two or 3 seemed to be even more genuine in their interactions. Sometimes the smaller groups converged with other small groups and became big groups and the big groups broke apart and became smaller. The ebb and flow of their social interactions was fascinating.

Then there were the couples that were obvious couples. Some were holding hands or boys had their arms around the waists or shoulders of their partners, while they talked about something with their friends, like the partners were just an extension of them . . . maybe like they were trying to stake their claim in the case of a few of them. Some couples were isolated and kissing in the dark just beyond the light from the blaze, and the one thing I strongly suspected about all of them was that their ebb and flow was quite similar to the patterns I'd noticed with the groups. The couples would eventually break apart and join in another pairing, like it was the most natural thing in the world, and really it was, because they were all so young.

I say 'they' but 'they' were more or less my age. Once again, I felt much older . . . and different. I had no desire to participate in the societal dances they didn't even realize they were doing. I was a lone wolf, and I certainly wasn't a lone wolf that did it for appearances sake. It's just something that was. Call it programming or an unintended side-effect of my upbringing. Either way, I was wired differently than these people. It didn't mean that I wanted to be alone. I just didn't belong with any of them. 

I glanced at Damon across the fire. He was a lone-wolf for sure. He'd only had one real friend in 150 years, and he'd essentially had to be locked up in a cage next to the guy for 5 years for them to become friends. Other than that, everyone in his life had been a momentary amusement to fill his time. He'd been stuck in the past in the times he'd had with Katherine and in the future he'd hoped they'd have together, which meant he'd missed out on what was present. That also meant that this whole working together in a team was new to him too. I honestly didn't know if we'd be able to work as part of the team this time, let alone for every new threat we faced, the way Elena was suggesting, but I guess we had to try or she and her friends would get themselves into trouble they couldn't handle. Fair enough that they were brave enough to want to fight back, but they were really only just starting out. I didn't have the patience necessary to wait for them to catch up, not that they necessarily would.

It was times like this that I wondered how my father had done it. He'd started training me from an early age. I mean before I could skip, I was learning how to hold a stake. Before I could ride a bike, I knew how to use a crossbow. Before I could drive, I was well versed on playing bait. I had no idea how he'd let me learn all of that instead of just doing it for me . . . but then I guess he was only just learning himself. 

He wasn't born to be a vampire hunter. He'd been raised hating them, but the training that went along with being a hunter is something that he hadn't started doing until after I was born, which, I guess would've been when he was about my age, and I couldn't imagine that. I couldn't imagine me having a child at this age and at the same time learning how to hunt vampires. I guess that's the reason he had been a weekend kind of Dad. He'd had to make a choice with what he knew from the witches: learn to do what he had to do to protect his children or be a more present kind of Dad, and knowing what he knew about vampires from an early age, he chose the former, because to protect his daughters, it's what he'd thought was the best. 

Just like he'd thought it was best that I learn how to protect myself, because he'd known that he wouldn't always be around, specifically after the time came for him to sacrifice himself to bring me back after Klaus's ritual. Just like he'd thought it was best to distance himself from me these last couple of years, not for himself and the thought of losing me, the way I'd thought, but for me, so I wouldn't feel his death so acutely. It hadn't worked. I missed him dearly, and it made me sad to think that I understood him better now that he was dead than I had when he was alive. Like no wonder he was pissed off when my Mom turned. He'd spent all that time training himself and me . . . trading being a father for becoming a hunter, and then my Mom not only becomes something that he's supposed to hunt and kill, but also skips ahead of him by leaps and bounds in her ability to protect me and my sister simply by the nature of what she'd become, something she proved to him when she threw him into my piano after he tried to stake her . . . ugh, that was not a good night.

My eyes flitted in Damon's direction again. If anyone said it to him, he'd deny it and say that whoever the person was must have him confused with his brother, but he seemed a little broody, as he watched the party going on in the middle of the clearing. He was supposed to be waiting for his moment to intercept Rebekah, but I didn't get the impression that's where his head was. His gaze landed on me briefly before moving on, but then came back to me when he registered that I was watching him. 

Settling against the tree he was leaning on, his features softened. Even though we were standing apart, just knowing I was with him in that moment made him feel relief at the notion that he wasn't alone here. Giving me an infinitesimal smile, that I think mirrored my own, he paused briefly before tilting his head in the direction of Elena. His eyebrow ticked up, like, 'What are you going to do about that?'" and I sighed.

Maybe my Dad could put up with training a child, because when I was a child, I wasn't getting drunk, not that Elena was getting any training from me. Dealing with Stefan was just something she wanted to do, most likely because she wanted to prove to herself and Stefan that she was stronger than the victim he'd turned her into by biting her and then flaunting his carefree attitude all over the place in front of her. If anyone was going to do something about him, then she wanted it to be her. But she was essentially playing bait . . . being bait didn't necessarily require a whole lot of training. Humans are lower on the food chain, so it doesn't take whole lot of training to learn how to be eaten. 

What takes training is being focused and acting the way bait should act with the knowledge that you're either going to kill the thing you're baiting or someone you trust, like your Dad, will, and you need to do it without giving into your urge to fight back until the time is right . . . or letting the thing you're baiting know that's what you're doing. You needed to be a good actress, and while Caroline might be a good actress, Elena was not, so she was making a rookie mistake. You don't drink on the job. You fake like you're drinking and act drunk, but you keep your wits about you. Maybe, if I was feeling charitable, I'd say that a bit of liquid courage was probably okay if it steeled your nerves . . . but downing drink after drink . . . no. She'd gone beyond her limits, and I knew that, but what was I supposed to do about it? 

I looked at Damon again, and he nodded towards her, like I should go talk to her. It was less because he thought it was time to get this plan going and more because he was being a mother hen that wanted me to go talk to my sister. He kept insisting on it. In fact, I think that's the reason he was even going along with any of this instead of dealing with it himself. Don't know why it was so important to him that I have a sister when his brother and he weren't exactly the poster children for healthy sibling relationships, but whatever. He gave me a more insistent look, and I sighed once again. I guess part of the plan included starting a fight with her, so she'd have a reason to storm off on her own. Might as well be over this. My shoulders dropped before I left my place on the sidelines to make a beeline for Elena. When I got to her, I took the red cup that she'd just filled out of her hand and poured it out on the ground.

Eyes wide in shock, she turned to look at me. "What are you doing?" 

Leaning closer, I hissed under my breath just loud enough for her to hear, "What are you doing? Act drunk. Don't get drunk." Standing back, I said a little louder, "You've had enough . . . more than enough."

"You move to Mystic Falls, try to steal my life, and now you're stealing my beer? Who the hell do you think you are?!"

Whoa, wait. Was this a real fight or a fake real fight? Because her anger looked kind of real, and like I said, I didn't think she could act. Maybe it was the booze. I mean I know we were supposed to have a fake fight, but I didn't really want to say something to turn it into a real fight and make her hate me more if she was faking. "Hold up, I just . . . uh . . . ." She's the only person on the face of the planet that really just threw me off my game. Trying to recover, I said, "I need a second to process that you think I'm trying to steal your life . . . You have a shitty life . . . Why would I want it?

Now she looked confused. This was going badly. "Well, hasn't your life been one big sob story that you bring out to endear everyone to you against their better judgement? "

My brow furrowed in confusion as I said, "But yours is equally bad . . . Mine's just been bad for longer. I mean, in a way, being around you has made your sucky life rub off on me . . . dead parents . . . I have to go to school with these neanderthals . . . put up with your stupid boyfriend . . . live in this retched town . . . Really, it's me that should be pissed that your life is affecting mine."

Leaning closer, she growled, "Then leave," and again in confusion, I almost yelled, "And go where?"

"Anywhere that isn't here . . . You don't want to be here. Nobody wants you here. Just leave." I was again thrown out of the moment when she suddenly reached forward to grab my forearm and pulled me behind her, yelling, "Don't touch her," while sending a glare at someone behind me. I'd thought maybe it was Stefan, but it wasn't him at all . . . just some guy I didn't know. It would appear we were drawing a bit of a crowd. Looking at another guy, she demanded, "What did you just say?" 

Now I was even more confused. Looking over her shoulder, I whispered, "I said act drunk, not crazy," and she nodded in the direction of the guy I didn't know while saying, "He was going to grab your ass."

"Oh." My brow furrowed as I puzzled over that one. "So, you're saving him."

She looked back at me with an identical look of bewilderment. "What?"

"Cause you think if he did, I'd detach his hand from his wrist, or - "

"No . . . nobody deserves to be groped like that." Sighing in frustration, she grabbed my forearm once again to drag me away from the party and out into the woods.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting you out of here."

"Taking the whole me leaving town thing a little far aren't you?"

"I meant the party. You shouldn't be here."

So she didn't want me to leave town? "But I thought the plan was - "

Stopping to look at me, she said, "I heard what happened today."

 _What in the actual hell is going on right now? Why are you so damn confusing?_ My cheeks puffed out slightly as I held my breath, and then my eyes narrowed as I cluelessly asked, "What happened today?"

"Your car!" Pointing in the direction of the bonfire, she said, "I heard what they did to it . . . That wasn't Rebekah or Stefan. It was the people I've lived with my entire life, and that was when they were sober. Now they're drunk, and you need to leave."

I exhaled a brief laugh. "I think I can handle - "

"No, you can't . . . Do you know why Damon and Stefan have never wanted their secret getting out? It's because they know if it did they don't stand a chance against a whole town of people out for their heads, and you are not a vampire. You're a human."

"Elena, it's nothing I haven't dealt with the last couple of months. I don't really understand - "

"I go to the same school as you, so I know what they say in the halls, and it is unbelievable. I heard someone today say - "

"It's fine. I know you guys didn't mean for it - "

Her eyes widened in shock once again. "Wait, do you blame me for this?!"

 _What, is it only a problem now that you've noticed it?_ "Uh . . . you, the people around you . . . I know it wasn't anybody's intention. It's just that this is a small town. It's kind of amazing that vampires have remained a secret here. If you complain about someone new and anyone overhears you, they're going to embellish it to the next person they tell, and so on and so forth and voila, you create the devil incarnate . . . Add to that Rebekah's political maneuvering and Stefan's constant presence, and yeah . . . that's how this happened. It's fine. I don't care. It's not a big deal." 

Throwing her hands in the air in frustration, she practically yelled, "It is a big deal . . . and I don't care what you say. It has gotten so much worse in the last week." Visibly distressed she started pacing back and forth in front of me, while she ranted. "Your car is just the start of it. It's only going to get worse . . . which is why I'm pulling you out."

"What?"

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's gotten too dangerous for you . . . the people in this town are too dangerous for you, so I'm making a judgement call." Grabbing me by the shoulders, she took a paranoid look around before leaning close enough to whisper into my ear in case any vampires were listening. "If this plan doesn't work, and we don't do something about Stefan tonight, then you're out. No more playing double agent." Stepping back and using a normal voice, she added, "No more living at the Boarding House if it means you have to drive him to school in the morning, because they see him with you, and they think you stole him . . . I'm not letting them think that anymore . . . And no more - "

"Wait, you can't tell me where to live. That's my home . . . I'm not leaving the only home I've ever had."

Waving that off as she started pacing again, she muttered, "What'd you grow up living in a cardboard box? Of course it's not the only home you've ever had." 

"Uh - "

Her eyes widened once again as she looked at me, "Oh my god . . . did you grow up in a cardboard box? Because - "

"What? No . . . We just never stayed in one place for more than a month or two tops."

Crossing her arms across her chest, like she didn't believe me, she asked, "Really?" 

"Yes, really! Pretty much anytime someone got to know us well enough to know my name or ask Mom about her daughter, she'd move . . . Didn't matter who it was, kindly old woman . . . creepy guy down the road. All of them were potential witnesses. Witnesses don't remember you very well if you keep a low profile and aren't there long. Their lives move on and so does yours."

She quietly asked, "They really kept you hidden?" Biting the inside of my cheek, I nodded, and she said, "Even after she turned?" I nodded again, and she asked, "What was she like before?"

Did she really want to do this now? "We have something we're supposed to be doing. Now isn't really - "

"I know. It's just that Damon was right." She cut herself off with a sigh before ducking her head. "I have all these questions that I have to have answered, and you're the only one who can answer them." _When did he say that?_ "Never mind. It's stupid, I just - "

I went from holding my breath to saying, "She, uh . . . she was brave, independent, smart - "

Looking like she wanted to know how rather than casting doubt on what I'd said, Elena interrupted me. "Brave?"

"I don't know what else you'd call someone our age faking her death and going off on her own to raise a child by herself." 

"What else?"

I was not going to do my Mom justice in the time we had. I guess if Elena wanted to know more, she could ask me another time. "She was distrustful of people, so she isolated herself from everyone that wasn't me or Dad, which meant she never had any friends, but she was never sad about it . . . or at least not in front of me. She was soft spoken and really patient with me, but she also had the weight of the world on her shoulders, so she was serious most of the time. She rarely laughed, but when she did, it filled the room. She loved music. She was a terrible cook. She was always busy. Grayson gave her money for the first 5 or 6 months, and she made that last, but - "

"My Dad?!" I stopped, and she exclaimed, "He knew about you?!"

"He did deliver both of us and forge Mom's death certificate."

"Are you serious?" I thought she already knew that . . . I mean she knew her Dad delivered her in his office and made a fake birth certificate for her. It kind of made her seem . . . I don't know. Self-absorbed? Like the only part of that situation that mattered was that she was born, but if we were twins, then we were both born under the same circumstances . . . and it made her seem either not all that intelligent or so disinterested in my story that she hadn't comprehended what us being twins really meant until now . . . or maybe it was something else. Maybe she had known all of that and just wanted me to confirm it for some reason? Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I nodded, and she looked off to the side with a sigh of frustration before saying, "And he gave you guys money?"

Maybe that was the real issue? Her father had been more involved than she'd thought. "Um . . . he couldn't afford to keep doing that with Jeremy on the way, so he stopped."

"And then what? Did John - "

I shook my head. "He was just a kid himself. It was a couple of years before he was in a place where he could give her anything, and by then she didn't want it."

"So what did she do to survive?"

"Well, I couldn't have a babysitter, so she worked at night when I was little. Dad came over to watch me on the weekends, because we lived too far away from here for him to do it every night, and - "

"So, what, she left you alone, while she went to work the other days of the week?" 

I shrugged, "What other choice did she have?"

Looking off to the side, Elena shook her head. "She could've found somebody. Nobody would've known you'd grow up to look like Katherine when you were a baby."

"Yeah, but she was young . . . She was scared after learning about the things that go bump in the night, and - "

"She left you alone as a baby!"

"As far as she knew then, anonymity was the best way to protect me, and it was either leave me there, or live in the cardboard boxes you were talking about . . . She never worked in diners that were far away from where we lived, so she was able to slip out and check on me. It's just the way things were, and what's done is done, so - "

Lifting her hands to stop me, Elena said, "All right fine," but I felt the need to say, "She worked during the day when I got older."

"How much older?"

"I don't know . . . when I was old enough to read. She'd give me my lessons, tell me she wanted them done when she got back, and then would go to work . . . Sometimes I'd leave some of the homework for when she got back, so when she did her research in the evenings, I could sit next to her at the table, and it was like we were doing our homework together. She didn't mind that . . . When I got a little bit older, I'd help her with her research on all things occult." Feeling like I'd done a great disservice to my Mom, I almost sounded desperate when I said, "But the important thing to know is that she loved both of us with everything she had . . . She even became a vampire for us, so she could find the answers she was looking for in places humans couldn't go." 

Looking away from me in disgust, Elena said, "Yeah, well I met her when she was a vampire, so I know - "

"No, you don't." Elena looked at me, and I shook my head. "You don't know what she was like after she turned. I heard about the things she said and did when she was here, and that wasn't her. It was an act . . . She needed the Gilbert device, and she couldn't let anyone think you were a weakness that could be exploited, so she did whatever she had to do to make it seem like she didn't care about you, but she did . . . She - "

"Why did she want it? Why would she - "

"She hated vampires."

"She was a vampire."

"So? From what I've heard, Mikael is a vampire too, and nobody hates vampires more than that guy." She tilted her head to the side to concede my point, and I said, "The tomb vampires were here, and on top of that, she didn't want her daughter dating one . . . She loved you, Elena. They both did. You were like a ghost resident in each house we lived in over the years. Whether she was a vampire or not, there were two birthday cakes, one for me and one for my invisible sister. Stories from Dad telling her what you'd been doing when he was allowed to see you . . . It was literally the first line of questioning out of her mouth every time she saw him even after she turned. "How's Elena? What are her friends like? How are her grades? Are there any boys? How does she like the bike? And - "

"Bike?"

Biting the inside of my cheek nervously for a moment, I nodded, "White tires and handlebars . . . pink frame and streamers, pink stripe around the tires, purple - "

Elena finished for me. "Basket . . . I remember. It was my first bike. My parents gave that to me for Christmas - " I shook my head, and in disappointment she said, "They didn't?"

"Dad heard you begging your parents for one, and they said - "

Looking hurt, because she knew where this was going, Elena again finished my sentence for me. "Maybe when you're older."

"Yeah . . . Dad told Mom, so they picked one out together, and Dad gave it to Grayson to give to you on their behalf."

Tears welled up in her eyes. "No."

Yeah, saying it sucked almost as much as hearing it must. Feeling my own eyes sting, I looked away from her and licked my bottom lip before I had it under control. Looking back at her, I nodded before giving her a weak smile. "Yeah . . . I remember, because they asked if I liked it, and I didn't like the pink one. I liked the sea foam green one, but Dad said you liked pink, so I said it was all right."

"You were with them when they got it?" 

"I was with them when they picked it out. They didn't get it until closer to Christmas."

Giving me a smile she said, "And you got the green one," like it'd make us more like sisters if I did, and again I looked away from her before saying, "Got my first crossbow instead." Looking back at her with a smile I didn't mean, I said, "So it all worked out okay."

A look of concern crossed her face. "But you must've been expecting the bike if - "

"Birthdays were for keyboards. Christmas was more for clothes or books . . . the essentials. So a crossbow was a pretty good present." 

Seeming like she wasn't sure she wanted the answer, Elena asked, "Why'd they do it? Why'd they give me up and keep you if I meant so much to them?"

I was tempted not to answer. She looked like she was reaching the limits on what she could process for now. "Elena, we have to - "

"I know we have other things to do, but I need to know."

"Right now?"

"Yes, right now."

I rolled my eyes and sighed before saying, "I would've thought that Stefan or - "

"Damon did. I want to hear it from you." Why? I was still hesitant, but she said, "Please."

"All right. Fine. You have to remember they were our age when they had us. The plan was supposed to be that your parents would adopt both of us . . . They were having trouble starting their own family . . . Jeremy wasn't supposed to be possible, and we came along a year before him. Mom was going to go to college . . . Dad too . . . Both were going to move on with their lives and grow up knowing we were being raised in the loving home of someone they knew and trusted . . . but then Mom went to some stupid carnival, and her friends convinced her to go see the fortune teller, who turned out to be a witch. Her plans changed."

Elena quickly asked, "What'd the witch say?" 

I brushed the back over the thumb of my forehead with a sigh and answered, "She told her that only one of her babies was going to survive . . . that to save both a great sacrifice had to be made . . . Mom freaked out, went to Dad, who knew a little about witches because of our family history, and during the week, they went to school, but on the weekends, they snuck away to find more answers from other witches . . . each one gave worse news than the last . . . eventually, they had to make a decision, and went to a coven that . . . well, see the reason only one of us was supposed to survive was - " 

I stopped. Did she really need to know this? I suspected that this part had been sugar-coated for her by Damon. Stepping forward, she asked, "What?"

I huffed out a sigh before saying, "We were both dopplegangers."

"So?"

"I'm not now."

Her eyes widened. "They took it from you and gave it all to me?" She started her pacing again as she began to yell, "Unbelievable. How could they - "

Yeah, that's part of why I'd thought better of saying it. The next words out of my mouth were the other part. "You were killing me, Elena." She stopped, and my shoulders dropped guiltily. "I wasn't supposed to be born." Laughing without humor, I said, "Call it survival of the fittest . . . We were both dopplegangers, but you were siphoning off my power to get all the doppleganger magic for yourself, and it was killing me. In order to stop you from doing that, they had the coven just give you all the doppleganger magic. Then you left me alone, and I was born, but there was a price for that . . . They couldn't keep both of us. They couldn't give both of us away and live the lives they'd planned either. They essentially sacrificed their own lives, so I could be born, and they did it knowing that they'd eventually have to lose one of us in the sacrifice or risk losing both of us in it. That's why they kept me secret . . . They figured if I took the doppleganger's spot in the sacrifice, then at least the curse wouldn't be broken, and Klaus wouldn't make his hybrids and kill even more innocent people. What they didn't want was for him to know about both of us. The witches said if he did, then we'd both die in the sacrifice . . . I didn't realize it until after the ritual, but I think they meant that Klaus would do to me what he did to Jenna . . . If I became a vampire after the sacrifice, that was . . . well, it was my choice to make, but if I was the vampire in the sacrifice, and you were the doppleganger, there was no coming back from that for me . . . and I guess Damon and Katherine's spontaneity threw the witches prophecy off." 

She didn't say anything, and I bowed my head before saying, "Anyway . . . we were born, and we had one moment as a family . . . Dad held both of us up for Mom to see until Grayson came in and said it was time. Dad handed you to him and me to Mom, and she held onto me, while they took you away. When they came back, they had the forged death certificate for Mom and a new identity . . . There was no birth certificate for me, and she walked out the door to try and find a way to support me on her own when she was just a kid herself. No college . . . no love of her life . . . just work, raising a kid, and researching every free second of every day, so she could maybe try to stop what was coming for her children some day."

"Is this why you hate witches?"

I threw a suspicious look her way at the strange change of topic. "Mostly."

"But Bonnie's not like - "

Wait. Is that why she had me out here talking about our dead parents? Was she playing me? "Elena, don't . . . Just don't. I don't have her powers. I can't give them back. The spirits that she gets her magic from don't think she's worthy at this time to have them. Plus, I'd say there is a fair share of Bonnie herself that doesn't think she should have them and until she confronts herself over what happens, she won't."

"But I know you know more than you're saying on how she can get her powers back, and Vicki - "

"Bonnie talked to Matt about Vicki, so it's up to Matt now."

"And if he brings her back?"

"Then I'll deal with it."

"How? How are you going to - "

"Dad had plenty of contacts I can - "

"What, like your friend, Imelda? Bonnie told me she was sketchy."

Yeah, I'd definitely been played. She'd dragged me over here to bond with her, so she could get what she'd really wanted from me. Guess I was wrong about her being a bad actress. I laughed another humorless laugh before looking away from her. "Yeah, I bet she did, because Imelda told her what I just said."

"How do you know her?"

And that's relevant how? "Did she or did she not help Anna find her Mom on the other side?"

"That's beside the point."

"That's the only point. It's why I set Jeremy up with her."

"I want to know how you know the witch you sent my brother to."

Well my Mom didn't know about it, that's for sure. Dad only took me because he sort of thought of it like me going to the store to buy something. It was transactional, so the woman didn't really get to know more about me other than I was a hunter, and she was a complete recluse, so she wasn't going to go around telling everyone about me. "Dad. She usually expects a favor in return for her services, but she's never asked me for more than I was willing to give. I know where I stand with her, so I trust her as much as I can trust a witch . . . And it's good to have one in your back pocket. Every serious player in this game has one."

"What's wrong?"

My walls had come back up . . . every last one of them. I felt . . . more than used, more than betrayed. I don't think there's a word to describe how I felt. I shared things with her that were important to me . . . And I felt stupid. I should've known she was only listening until she could bring up what she really wanted to talk about. Shaking my head, I said, "It doesn't matter," and went to walk away, but stopped in front of her to say, "You know . . . I can say the exact same thing about Katherine. I don't trust her, but at least with her, I know where I stand, and she has never made me feel the way you just did. In all honesty, she's the better sister," before going around her.

"Eve . . . I had to try . . . Eve, please, she's my best friend. I don't think you realize what this is doing to her, and we need her. Matt really wants his sister. What if he . . . Eve? Eve! Where are you going? I thought we were supposed to - "

And that? That was all the confirmation I needed to know I was right about what her intentions had been all along. She'd used me wanting to have a sister against me to get something she wanted. "Do it yourself . . . I'm leaving."


	26. Impossible Teammate

My bedroom door slammed open, and I didn't need to look at the whirlwind that entered to know who it was, so I didn't bother to look up from my book. "Where the hell were you tonight?" 

I shrugged, not really feeling like having this conversation. I was still mad . . . just not at Damon, and I didn't want to take it out on him. "Why don't you ask Elena?"

"She said you left. How the hell do you let a fake fight turn into a real one? We had a plan."

He was angry, pacing, and looking for a fight. My nonchalant attitude wasn't helping. "I'll shoot him up with vervain in his sleep . . . or whenever I feel like it, something I could've done days ago if we didn't have to follow the stupid plan." 

"Right . . . and what about Original Barbie? I thought the idea was to - "

"I'll do it while she's at school. She won't know the difference. She's too wrapped up in looking after Tyler and high school politics with Caroline."

"Yeah, and how do you plan on getting him to rehab from the school after you've darted him?"

"Who said anything about doing it at school? I'll do it on the way home. He'll already be in the car, so that's problem solved . . . And I'm not sure if you noticed or not, but somebody followed me home tonight. He's in his room now . . . I think that puts to rest whether or not Klaus compelled him to watch me, and he obviously can't kill me either. I told you I thought Klaus might find it more amusing if Stefan was demoted to protecting me, so I can protect her."

He didn't say anything, and I finally looked up at him. He looked like he was struggling with himself, maybe tempted to rip the book out of my hands or throw something . . . possibly rip the book out of my hands and throw it. I put the book down on the bed next to me, and now that I'd taken away what he'd wanted to do to express his frustration, all he could do was throw me a look as he harshly sat on the foot of my bed. He chose not to look at me as he said, "Meaning it wouldn't have worked, and Elena could've been hurt or killed if she did what she was thinking of doing." He shook his head before looking at me. "But that's not why you left . . . And you didn't tell me, so I was left hanging. I don't care about anyone else, but you and I are supposed to be partners."

Oh. I felt the first twinge of guilt for my actions and quickly found that the frayed hem of my sweatshirt sleeve needed my attention. "I didn't think about that."

"You mean about me?" I shrugged a shoulder, and he said, "Yeah, well, I've been hearing that a lot lately."

"Actually, I think you've been hearing it all along . . . just maybe not in those words or in words at all." My eyes flicked up to him. "I've been pretty selfish from the start. I used you for my plan, went after Mason alone even though I knew you wouldn't like it, was going to use myself to kill Katherine even though it was blatantly obvious it's not what you wanted . . . you get the general idea." Going back to staring at my sleeve, I said, "I guess I really don't do teams."

I waited for him to say something, and eventually he said, "So you _knew_ I wouldn't like you going after Mason on your own, and that's why you made sure I was out of town with Elena. You're such a liar." 

Of course that's what he'd pick up on first, something to settle an argument we'd had going for what seemed like ages. I looked up at him, and he seemed awfully smug. I gave him a small glare. "I'm not a liar. I didn't want you hurt. That is why I made sure you were out of town with Elena. I didn't tell you what I was going to do, because I knew you wouldn't like it after the way you reacted when I said I was going to go after Katherine."

He looked away from me again with a little scowl before shaking his head and exhaling a deep breath. "You're wrong." I waited for him to say how, and he directed his attention back to me before saying, "We're a good team." My eyebrow arched, and he said, "Okay, we're a good team, like 95% of the time, but even with that 5%, I make decisions for you when I know you're making the wrong one, and you do the same for me. We get pissed off, and then we get over it . . . But what happened with Bonnie, and now this . . . I'm not even a factor."

My first instinct was to be snide, to say something to push him away, because I knew he was right. I struggled with it briefly before bowing my head and looking at the hem of my shirt again. I was hurt both times and then both times, I'd unintentionally turned around and hurt him. "What happened with Rebekah?"

"Don't change the subject."

"I'm not. You're right. I left you there to deal with her alone, so - "

"Yeah, well, you were going to do that anyway to help Elena."

"Did she hurt you?"

"I'm fine."

"That's not what I asked." 

My eyes went to him, and he slowly shrank back from the sudden darkness that overtook them and my entire change of demeanor. If Rebekah hurt him, then I was going to take that dagger, bury it in her heart, and throw her somewhere nobody would find. Part of my anger was directed at myself for having been so careless with his life as to not be there when he needed my help with an Original, and another part was anger at life in general. I could really use something to kill.

"I'm fine."

"Damon - "

"What happened? Why'd you leave?"

"It doesn't matter."

"It does to me."

"It shouldn't." 

Rolling his eyes as he looked away from me in frustration, he muttered, "Awesome. So we're right back where we started." He shook his head before throwing me a side-glance. "With the added bonus of murderous eyes." I turned my head to look away from him, so he didn't think I was going to murder him, and he reached forward to rest his hand on the calf of my leg. It had the immediate effect of making me relax, and he smiled to himself before saying, "We should get away from here for a while."

My shoulders dropped as I looked back at him. "What about school?"

"Meh, I'm over it. I'd rather have you here to entertain me during the day."

It smoothed out any remaining tension I was feeling. "You know."

"That my brother and Klaus's sister have turned it into anything but a normal high school experience and too many of the students want to run you out of town on a rail? Yeah I know . . . not that you've told me." 

I ducked my head again. _Stupid bonfire party._ What he was really angry about was me downplaying how things at school were going, not that I'd bailed on the plan tonight . . . He wouldn't have cared why I did that, just that I didn't tell him I was doing it before I did. He thought I was shutting him out, and maybe I was. "It's not that big a deal."

"Saw your car on the way in."

Maybe I should give him something. I bit my bottom lip before taking a deep breath. "It looks better now that I changed the tires."

"What was wrong them?"

I shrugged a shoulder. "You know . . . just must've driven over a construction site without knowing it and punctured all four on my way to school this morning." I glanced at him and saw the tail end of the anger that flashed across his face before saying, "I was thinking after I get it re-painted, I might just start leaving it here."

"Or . . . you could just quit, and we can hit the road."

"It's only been a week."

"A week too long. Come on, you don't even need to go. Just finish your Mom's lesson plan. That way you don't feel like you didn't earn it when I compel you into a spot in a random graduating class, so you can walk across the stage." I loved that idea, and I think it showed, because he felt it was safe enough to crawl up the bed and sit next to me. "What do you say?"

"I say, you've put some thought into that one."

"Yep . . . It was either that or kill every last one of them that was there tonight." 

Resting my head on his shoulder as he wrapped an arm around me, I muttered, "I can't just quit."

"Sure you can. Just stop going."

"And hide away from everyone but you forever?"

Nuzzling into the hair at the top of my head, he continued trying to coax me into it. "It worked before, didn't it?" Yeah, it's something I'd been saying since the night of the ritual. I really did miss being a ghost. I hesitantly nodded, and he said, "And I was thinking about it. I think you were right . . . about your Dad. I don't think what he did for Elena was a last minute save he came up with on the spur of the moment. I think maybe when I tried to get him to talk you out of going through with it, he knew he wasn't going to see you again. I hated the guy, and I know he hated me, but I can't shake the feeling that he was giving me pointers on you, and I didn't listen . . . What's normal by other people's standards isn't normal for you . . . You can do one-on-one or one-on-two, but any more than that, and it all starts to fall apart. It's not your fault. It's just the way it is, and if I want you to be happy, which I do . . . then I want you home with me until we figure out this Klaus mess and then we can hit the road."

"Low blow pulling out the Dad card."

"Not if it works."

"I don't know if it's in my DNA to quit."

"Then don't think of it as quitting. Think of it as transferring to the Salvatore Boarding School for Girls Named Eve."

Oh, I really wanted to do what he said. "Doesn't that mean they win?"

"Nope. It means that you're getting what you've wanted all along . . . I just didn't want you to miss out on it and regret it later, but I don't think you will, and you have been off all week."

"I honestly can't hear anything they say anymore. I'm completely tuned out to anything that isn't your brother. He killed a janitor on the first day of school, because he couldn't find me during band class, so I started letting him go to that class too, and now, he's decided he's the band's premiere triangle player . . . He thinks it's hilarious to intentionally get it wrong so everyone has to start over again." 

Damon snorted before wrapping me up a little tighter in his arms and saying, "So quit and stay home with me."

"I want to do that, but I have a responsibility to - "

"Screw that. You are not responsible for keeping my brother and Goldilocks from killing anyone, especially the dicks at that school."

"I am though . . . and it's not just that. I'm drifting, and if I don't stick at something, then I'll always be a failure."

I looked up at him, and he rolled his eyes. "Just because you didn't die in a stupid ritual, doesn't mean you're a failure." 

Ignoring him, I grumbled, "And of course my plan to ruin Klaus's life hasn't exactly gone to plan."

"Did he, or did he not leave Elena, his hybrid, his sister, and my brother here? It's a good start."

"You did that, not me." Shrugging my shoulder, I added, "And I'm not even entirely sure I want to ruin his life anymore."

Damon's eyebrows rose as he slowly nodded, and then his eyes narrowed before he said, "This is about him training you when he gets back, isn't it? Don't think I didn't see your eyes light up when you read that. "

"Would it be so bad?"

"Yes." I gave him a look that said I was expecting more, and he said, "Eve, it's Klaus! He killed your Mom and is the reason your Dad is dead."

"No, my Dad is dead because he decided that was better than Elena becoming a vampire, and my Mom is dead because - "

"Klaus compelled her to take off her necklace and burn in the sun." Yeah, Klaus had done that, and I knew that, but I hadn't seen it, so it was a little hard for me make the connection even though it wasn't hard for me to imagine the guy I knew doing it. I sighed before resting my head on Damon's chest, and he added, "You don't need the guy you used to call 'evil incarnate' training you."

"Maybe not . . . but he really puts me through my paces mentally."

"Yeah, so you can keep him from killing you!"

Ignoring that the volume of his voice was on the rise again in favor of continuing to hold onto him to calm him down, I said, "And you . . . and anyone around him, but I can't help but feel like I could learn something from him."

Resting his chin on top of my head, Damon muttered, "Nothing good," and I said, "Bet he could teach me how to use a sword."

"When are _you_ ever going to need to use a sword. Your machete, stakes, guns, bombs, whatever else you have in that cabinet, and your brains are enough." 

I was genuinely conflicted at this moment in time when it came to Klaus, but I also knew that this was quickly becoming one of our games. I looked up at him again to seriously say, "But what if he gets me a pony," and he immediately cracked up. When one of us laughed, it typically meant that the other one had won, and usually it was me that came out on top, but he normally held out longer than this. I didn't mind though. Seeing his whole face light up with a genuine laugh was probably one of my favorite things in life. As his lips found mine a few moments later, I decided this was quickly becoming another. 

I reveled in the feeling of warmth that spread throughout my body as his tongue swirled against mine. It worked to thaw the icy build up in my chest that seemed to be a constant more often than not these days. I may have gotten a little carried away when I felt him start to pull back, because I bit his bottom lip a little hard, but he issued a soft growl as he came back to me with a greater urgency. Well, he liked that I guess. Good to know. 

He might like it, but that didn't mean he wasn't fully committed to keeping things at a glacial pace, because he did force himself to stop a minute later. Tucking his face against mine, he took a couple of breaths to maintain control before he whispered, "I get it . . . I get that for whatever reason, Klaus has accepted you in a way that nobody around here has - "

"Except for you, and that's really all that matters, isn't it?"

I felt him relax as he brought his hand up to brush my hair out of my face. "Except for me . . . But with Klaus, it isn't permanent. He will turn on you the way he has everyone else, and on top of that, he is a bad influence."

I quickly sat back to look at him. "If you think he's a bad influence, that implies that I am being bad."

Tapping his finger against my temple to accentuate his point, Damon said, "He's got you switched off and in hunter mode more than you're not. It was really noticeable after you got back, and it hasn't really gone away." 

"Well, maybe that's because it's my default setting when I feel hunted, and I feel hunted all. the. time."

Not looking like that surprised him in the slightest Damon responded. "Yeah. And that's because you were being hunted when you were on the road with him. You still are, and he isn't even here. It's because of him that I'm a little surprised my brother hasn't come knocking on your door to bother us, and it's because of him that Rebekah is now our problem. It's because of him that what happened with Bonnie happened."

My shoulders dropped as I absorbed that. "Point made . . . with the exception of what happened with Bonnie. That was all Bonnie and I."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't have been - "

I put my finger to his lips to silence him and said, "Let me take responsibility for that one. It is well deserved."

He nodded to let me know he'd consider it, and I removed my finger before he said, "I don't want you near him."

My eyebrow arched in response. "Yeah, I'm getting that. Guess that white knight fantasy is winning out over the bad boy fantasy, huh?"

Touching his forehead to mine, he sighed, "Eve - "

I brought my hand to the side of his face to reassure him and whispered, "Damon, I'll be okay."

"Stay home with me."

"I'll do you a deal." He waited, and I said, "Give me a week to turn things around. I owe it to you . . . I'm a little tired of your well-intended plans for me backfiring, and - "

"I changed my mind. I'm really fine with it."

Rushing on, like I hadn't heard what he said, I continued, "But more than that, I owe it to myself not to give up on me . . . And I mean, I can't exactly spend years bitching about not being able to go to school and then give up after a week when I finally have the chance to do it, can I?" 

He gave me a soft smile before shaking his head, and then held his breath before asking, "What happened with Elena?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Please?"

I'm pretty sure that word was invented to manipulate people, and if it wasn't, that's totally why he was using it now. It was a little sad that it kind of worked. "Will you stay out of it?"

"I can't promise that."

"You can and you will."

"Not if you don't want me to lie to you."

"Damon, it's none of your business."

"What happens with you is my business."

I sighed before pulling back to look him in the eye. "If you don't want me to shut you out, then I need to know - "

"All right. Fine. I promise."

"You don't mean that."

"Nope."


	27. Forgive You, Forgive Me

"Ready?!" I think it was meant to be a rhetorical question, but Caroline tossed a look in my direction. As ready as I'd ever be. I gave her a nod, and she smiled before yelling, "Okay! 5, 6, 7, 8!"

After not training with her since the Klaus fiasco, I'd shown up at her house out of the blue on Saturday morning wearing the normal clothes I did for our training and told her we needed to talk. 

I'd had a whole speech prepared. It went something like, "We're not friends. We can't be. In case you've forgotten, it has nothing to do with me not wanting to be your friend. You have done nothing wrong. It's just the way it has to be, because I will not be responsible for destroying long-standing friendships you've had for your entire life . . . Having said that, there is nothing stopping me from being on your squad with you, and I can't help but notice you've had your hands full with Rebekah joining it, so - " and that's all the further I got as she stopped me from pacing by throwing her arms around me in a giant hug. It was then that I'd felt like I had to begrudgingly admit that she may have been right, and I might need her help to rehabilitate my image. 

I didn't tell her that I was only giving myself a week to do it, and if I didn't, then I was going to quit. She didn't need the added pressure, and it's not something I wanted to admit, not that I was going to leave town if I did leave school. I might want to take off with Damon, but I couldn't. Everyone else here would be screwed if we left. Damon might not care about that, but I did, so I'd just stay at the boarding house, do the home schooling thing, and when it came time for graduating, we'd go on a road trip, so I could have my graduation somewhere else. But none of that would happen without me trying first, and being there on bended knee asking Caroline for help was my attempt at doing that. 

She'd spent the rest of the weekend drilling me on cheerleading the way I drilled her on self-defense. I guess it helped that my Mom used to be a cheerleader. When I was younger, there was a phase she went through when she used to run through some of her old routines with me on her days off from work. I guess I was 11 or 12 though, so it was a long time ago, and it showed, but Caroline was like a drill sergeant and wouldn't let me get anything wrong. I think she was a little surprised that she didn't get much in the way of resistance from me, but then I reminded her that I my Dad had trained me to be a vampire-killing machine by doing pretty much the same thing she was. She'd looked momentarily concerned, like she wasn't sure she wanted to be like him before it passed when she realized she didn't care how I got better as long as I did, and I did get better, particularly when I saw the usefulness that learning some of these flips, tucks, and stunts might have for vampire hunting. I didn't care about the rest of the routines, but those were fun.

Anyway, that's why I was here on Monday evening at cheerleading practice, going through the routines, and despite some grumbling at the start about why I was there when I'd missed tryouts, I guess it was going okay even with Rebekah around. I don't think she liked me being there at all. As far as I was concerned, it served her right. She'd found her way onto the squad to annoy Caroline. It seemed only fair I should do the same to her, and it was immensely amusing for me to watch her with the other girls. They didn't like her anymore than they liked me, but at least I had Caroline . . . well, I did for as long as we were at practice. 

Grabbing my water bottle when Caroline finally let us leave, I looked over and saw Damon's car. He was picking me up today, since I hadn't wanted to chance bringing my car now that he'd gotten the realtor to also sign over their garage to me. It may seem like he was slowly signing the house over to me, but I had everything important to me protected now, so Elena could keep the rest. Neither Stefan or Rebekah could get into the garage to do something to my car, like hot-wire it, and it wasn't like they could compel anyone from town to get in there to mess with it. They could talk someone into it the normal way, but I didn't think they'd do that anymore than I thought Rebekah would knock the garage down on top of it. It took too much effort.

Another reason today didn't seem as bleak as last Monday was that with Damon driving me, Stefan and Rebekah had to find their own way here . . . It felt a little like cheating to have him pick me up and drop me off, like I was a little kid that needed him to take me to school, because I couldn't figure it out on my own, but at the same time, I felt like maybe I should've tried it out a week ago. It'd made this morning infinitely easier, because I didn't have to see the dreadful duo until my first class, and knowing I would see Damon at the end of the day, gave me something to look forward to all day.

I was almost to his car door when I heard steps rapidly approaching me from the direction of the school. "Hey!" That wasn't a happy hey. It was a,' stop walking, because I want to kick your ass,' kind of hey. My shoulders dropped as I turned to look at Bonnie, but she wasn't in my line of vision for very long as Damon got out of the car and blocked her approach.

"Watch it, Witchy, you don't want to walk up on her like that."

"Why? What's she gonna do?"

"Probably nothing now that you've lost you're basically human, but me on the other hand?"

I didn't have to see his face to know he was giving her one of his more devilish smirks. Sighing, I stepped out from behind him and looked at Bonnie. An apology for finding a way to hang out with Caroline was on my lips, but then I decided as long as Caroline didn't get yelled at for letting me on the squad, then I wasn't going to apologize for it. Besides, that may not even be what this was about, so why apologize until it was brought up. "What's wrong?" 

"Your witch is what's wrong."

Uhhh. My eyes flicked up to Damon, and he didn't have any idea what she was talking about either. Glancing at Bonnie, my eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What'd she do?"

"When Elena and I went to talk to her, she - "

Realizing I hadn't actually done anything wrong, I finally gained back the rest of my confidence and stepped in front of Damon saying, "Elena wasn't with you when you went to see her with Jeremy. Did you go back?"

Holding her head high, Bonnie's chin jutted out as she squared her shoulders. If that was her, 'I just realized that I fucked up, but I don't want you to know it,' pose, then it was quite proud and formidable. "You - "

Raising a finger to stop her, I said, "I set you up with Imelda to help Jeremy and to get you some answers. I did not tell you to go to her again. You never go to a witch like her more than once unless there's like a year spread out between visits, because on your first visit, she will suss you out by helping you out on something small, see how desperate you are for what you really want, and then the next visit, she'll up her ask." That's why you wait at least a year. By then whatever the problem is will most likely have worked itself out, and whoever the witch was wouldn't be able to use it against you. If it was a lifelong problem, then you were better off just finding another witch.

"I know the type." I looked up at Damon, and he shrugged. "It's a little like a drug dealer giving you the first hit for free. They get you hooked, and then you're screwed." Looking at Bonnie, he added, "To fix whatever it is that you want fixed now, she's going to ask for more."

Turning her attention back on me in concern, Bonnie yelled, "Why the hell did you tell Elena you trusted her?"

Oh for the love of god, whatever problem they created was going to end up being turned around and placed on me, wasn't it? "I didn't say I trusted her. I said I trust her as much as I can trust any witch, because I know where I stand with her. I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't trust any witches."

Balling her hands into fists are her side, Bonnie gritted out, "Why would you send us to someone you don't trust?"

"Because Imelda's not far from here, and Jeremy had a simple problem that needed fixing. Contact the other side and help Anna find her Mom. There's not a whole lot required to do that, so I knew the price would be minimum. You had questions. Imelda's a shut in, and she likes the company, so again, another simple solution to your problem. What I did not do was tell you to keep going back to her . . . and - "

"You didn't say not to go back to her either."

"Yeah, well, I didn't say you should look both ways before you cross the street, but you don't have much trouble doing that without me saying it, do you? You should know I didn't trust her with anything important, because I gave very specific instructions not to tell her about - " Bonnie took a step back, and I paused. "Oh Bonnie, tell me you didn't."

Here came that proud, yet determined look from earlier, but I found it much less inspiring this time. "I would've dealt with it myself, but you took my magic away from me, so - "

I wasn't strong enough not to take the bait. I should have been, but apparently, I wasn't. What was it about she and Elena that just made me regress into this pathetic teenager. "I didn't take your damn magic. It's not like I have it hidden up my sleeve somewhere. You broke the rules with Jeremy, and you know it. You - "

"He is your _cousin!_ And he's done nothing but give you the benefit of the doubt. How can you - "

"It's not up to me, Bonnie. When it's your time, it's your time, and - "

Looking calm and sounding hateful, Bonnie interrupted me. "You don't fool me. This isn't about teaching me some kind of lesson. It's about what happened to your Dad."

It sucked the air right out of my sails. Was she right? No, but it did shine a light on the reason why I didn't like her or think about her unless we were in the same room together. In truth, there was a lot of blame to go around when it came to the circumstances surrounding my Dad's death; Klaus, Damon, Elena, Dad himself . . . but almost all of that blame could ultimately be laid at Bonnie's feet. She's the one who did the spell that tied my Dad's life force to Elena, and she knew what it would do if Elena died, but she did it anyway, and she did it simply because she didn't want her best friend to become a vampire . . . and because it was a loophole. If Elena hadn't died, then nothing would have happened to my Dad, so it wasn't technically the spell that killed him. It was Elena dying that killed my Dad, which means nature let it slide, and Bonnie got off scot free on a technicality.

If I really believed that, then why hadn't I gone after her? Honestly, it's probably because I was lost after my parents' deaths, and I still was, especially when it came to trying to figure out life without ever having really been prepared for it. I needed something bigger than a witch in high school to take my mind off of all of that, and going after Klaus was about as big as I'd thought I could get. Now it was Mikael. 

The thought of going after Bonnie had never crossed my mind until she almost got me killed and then started spewing all of her high and mighty bullshit about how bad I am, and that meant my Dad's death wasn't a conscious factor in my decision to strip her of her power. It was just the cause of this prevailing feeling I had whenever I was around her, one that made me dislike her, one that said, 'who are you to judge me for anything I do after what you did?' and that dislike I had for her probably fueled me on to do what I did when I probably wouldn't have if it had been anyone else. 

By saying what she did about my Dad, she'd touched a raw nerve, and it made me say, '"If you honestly think you are important enough for me to waste my time plotting some kind of revenge against you for murdering my Dad, then think again, because you're not. After what you took from me, I need much bigger prey to take my mind off of it." 

She rolled her eyes and started to walk away. "Forget it. I'll deal with - "

"I'm not done yet." My voice had barely risen, but there was an unmistakable edge to it that made her stop. 

Bonnie turned back to look at me, and I ignored Damon saying, "If she wants to deal with it herself, I say we let her. Let's just go home," and was then forced to listen to him when he stepped in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders to make me look at him. Leaning closer, he tried again, but quieter this time. "You're not hunting right now. You're in the high school parking lot."

It took me right out of my mood. "I wouldn't - "

"I know." He threw me a small smile before saying, "But not everyone can see past the claws."

I bit the inside of my cheek before taking a deep breath and saying, "Are you saying I'm scary?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "Not to me." His head tilted in the direction over his left shoulder, and I saw Elena and Caroline approaching as Bonnie went over to them loudly saying, "You were right. She wouldn't help. Let's - "

Before I could respond, Damon stood taller and turned around to look at them. "Oh, give it a rest!" He left me to go over to them saying, "You wanna know why you're a powerless witch now? It's because you get your power from nature, and there are laws that rule it. You rose the dead. Strike one. You used magic to kill an innocent human. Strike two, and that's all the strikes you get. You failed Witching 101, and now your powers are gone. That's on you, so leave it alone."

I hadn't needed him to do that for me. I could deal with this on my own, but there was a part of me that'd felt completely satisfied watching him do it. He turned to walk back to me, but Elena felt the need to stand up for her friend, which was entirely understandable. It's what Damon was doing too. "I wouldn't expect you to understand it, but she at least owes Bonnie an apology." 

He stopped and turned on a dime, but I was standing in front of him to block his way before he could take a step in their direction. Keeping him behind me, I muttered over my shoulder just loud enough for him to hear, "You're not hunting right now . . . You're in the high school parking lot," before looking over at the three girls and saying a little louder, "As the aggrieved party in this situation, know that I forgive you, Bonnie Bennet." I felt Damon relax behind me as he exhaled a laugh, and Bonnie's head snapped in my direction. "Before you say whatever it is that you're about to say, Bonnie, give yourself time to absorb what I just said, know that I mean it, and if you still want to say it, get back to me on it in a couple of days. I promise you that if you don't, it will make it 10x worse when you're finally ready to stop being in denial and face everything that happened." 

She needed something to hold onto as she grappled with her inner demons, and my forgiveness may not be much when what she needed was her own forgiveness, but it was a start. I may not like her, but I was trying to help. I don't know if it was for her or me. I was just ready for this whole thing to be over. She didn't take my advice. "You think that you're blameless here? Why don't you go f-"

I stepped away from Damon to say, "You don't need an apology from me. In fact, I think it'll make you feel worse in the long run. What you need is my forgiveness, and you have it, but if it's what has to happen, so you can even begin to listen to what I am saying to you, then I'm sorry that you now know what you're truly capable of doing and are forced to confront the darkness that lies within. It is not an easy thing to confront, and I would know. But at least now you know it's there, and you can do with it what you will. I would recommend facing it, accepting it is a part of you that you need to control, and moving past it, or it will eat you alive - maybe turn you into the thing you fear most."

"That is not an apology. You're not sorry for what you did. You're sorry for how you think I feel about it."

Damon responded for me. "Well, that's the most you're getting. I suggest you all run on home and fix whatever mess you made yourselves." 

Gently pressing his hand into the small of my back, he turned us to head back to the car, and only stopped, because I did when Elena quietly yelled in desperation. "Vicki tried to kill me." 

I looked at her over my shoulder, and Damon sighed before dropping his hand from my back as I turned to ask, "When?" .

Caroline nudged Elena with her elbow and nodded towards me. Ducking her head briefly before looking over at me, Elena begrudgingly answered, "Saturday started out okay, but then I started having all of this really bad luck, like fall down the stairs for no reason and feel like I'm being pushed into traffic kind of bad luck . . . Bonnie figured out what was happening and talked to Matt. We got Imelda's number from Jeremy, and she said to bring Matt with us when we met her. That's where we all were today."

I just couldn't help myself. "Hm . . . maybe that's why today seemed like it was going better."

Caroline stopped Elena from turning around and heading in the other direction, while she directed a look at me that said to be nice. "Eve."

Tilting my head back to look up the sky, I pondered my next question and tried to think of how to put it in the least insulting way possible, I eventually sighed before looking at Elena and saying, "I take it Vicki is gone now?" 

Elena nodded. "Yeah, but something's not right."

I'd get to that in a second. "And how much did you tell Imelda?"

"She said she needed to know everything if she was going to help."

"That was her price." 

Elena quickly shook her head. "No, she asked for something else."

I shook my head in disappointment. "Then you paid double what you should have." She looked confused, and I said, "It's all in the word play. If she said, 'I need to know everything if I'm going to help,' or 'If I'm going to help, then I need to know everything,' and not, ''I need to know everything, _so_ I can help,' then information was her price for helping. Of course if you didn't know that and then asked what she wanted in return for her services, then she wouldn't correct you or turn it down. What was her price when you asked? Please tell me that you didn't give her any of your blood, because - "

Elena cut me off by pointing her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the school, and that's when I saw the tiny figure hiding in the shadows. "She said we had to do it here, since Mystic Falls is where Vicki is strongest, so - "

"You told her what she wanted to know over the phone instead of in person?!" 

Elena looked a little embarrassed by my rebuke, while saying, "We thought we should call to let her know we were coming instead of just showing up on her doorstep . . . and she needed a lift here, so we gave her one, and then after Vicki was gone, she said what she wanted was a place to stay, and now she's staying at my house . . . apparently. She hasn't mentioned going home."

"My God, how are we related? You do realize you paid 3x over the asking price, since the lift here was something else she weaseled out of you." I sighed before shaking my head and then turning my attention back on the hidden figure by the school. She was shorter than Bonnie in height and had a very delicate, some might say, fragile, bone structure. Her clothes were supper baggy, like 5x too big, and you couldn't see her from here, but I knew without a doubt that she was hiding, because being out in public made her immensely uncomfortable, possibly with good reason. 

Her stature, the way she held herself, and the fact that she was essentially hiding meant she looked skittish, unassuming, and weak, but I knew she wasn't any of those things. If she was making an appearance, Elena was right, that wasn't good. Slowly extending a hand towards Caroline, and speaking calmly and clearly, like I was advising her to step away from a snake that was ready to strike, even though Imelda was a good 30 yards away, I quietly said, "Caroline, can you come here please?" She looked at Bonnie and Elena in confusion before stepping closer, and I used her body to hide that I was searching for my favorite stake at the bottom of my gym bag as I said to Damon, "You need to go. Take Caroline with you and hide my stake for me." 

He started to say, "I'm not leaving you - " at the same time Elena walked up next to Caroline and asked, "Why? Did you steal that from her?"

I looked between the two, unsure of who I should answer first and just decided on an response that might make sense to both. "It was a 16th birthday present. I made it, and Imelda made it indestructible. To keep it that way, I had to kill 17 vampires with it by my 17th birthday. Trust me, I earned it." Handing it to Damon, I felt the need to add, "I will be fine, but I'm not so sure she won't try to take this back if she's figured out what you and Caroline are." I have no idea whether she'd been able to hear any of what we'd been talking about from where she was standing, but I did know that there was a reason vampire hunters went to Imelda, and it wasn't for the pleasant conversation.


	28. Something Wicked This Way Comes?  Not Quite.

Well, if we wanted me on my back foot and feeling out my depth, then this was the perfect venue for our visit. I felt as uncomfortable in Elena's kitchen as Imelda had looked outside the house. Of course her discomfort disappeared the second she got in here, so it's like she was a brand new witch. She was already sitting at the head of the kitchen table, like she owned the place. 

Elena went over to the counter to make some tea, and Imelda flicked her wrist in the direction of the chair nearest to me. It came sliding away from the table of its own accord, and she cast a brief look at Bonnie in challenge for being able to do something as simple as that when Bonnie couldn't. Then her attention was on me. "Sit."

Well, I guess I could see why Bonnie would think she was sketchy if she was doing passive aggressive things like that to her when people's backs were turned. In reality, Imelda was most likely affronted by what Bonnie had done to lose her powers. Imelda was a purist. That meant that she was insulted by the misuse of magic and all things that went against the rules of nature. In fact, Bonnie bringing Jeremy back was probably higher up Imelda's list of dislikes than killing me had been. She absolutely loathed vampires, because they cheated death, but then again, I suppose she did have other reasons to hate them as well.

She was young, maybe in her early 30s or about to be, and she had a look about her that reminded me somewhat of Jenna. They had similar hair and facial features, or they would if Imelda's hadn't been scarred almost beyond recognition along the right side of her face and neck. She probably could've used some of her magic to heal the bite marks, or at least make them less noticeable, but she hadn't. Her hatred ran so deep that not only would she rather shut herself off from the world and keep her scars as a constant reminder of the ordeal that'd given them to her, but she'd also given her right eye in a spell she used to decimate the group of vampires that'd tortured her. It was a milky gray sort of color compared to the hazel green of her good eye, and it also made her more powerful than she'd already been.

"So . . . Eve. Long time, no see." I exhaled a laugh at her joke, and she gave me a smirk in response before saying, "There's something different about you . . . and it's not just the hair, which I love by the way. It's something else . . . something magical . . . what have you got?"

Elena and Bonnie both immediately looked in my direction, and I briefly bit the inside of my cheek before unzipping the new black hooded sweatshirt that I'd gotten to replace my old one, so I could show her the tie pin I kept on me at all times. Leaning forward to take a look at it, she studied it for a few moments before her eye flicked up to mine. "Do I want to know how you got that?"

Did she want to know a vampire that was part of the original family of vampires who created all other vampires had given it to me? No. "Why? Do you have nothing better to do than keep tabs on me? Were you suddenly unable to do it anymore?"

She tossed me a small smile for poking fun at her solitude before sitting back and taking her cup of tea from Elena, while saying, "Well, it's not every day you meet a 16-year-old hunter, let alone one who can deliver. Of course I kept tabs on you . . . How's your stake working out?"

She was not getting that back. I earned it fair and square. "Still my favorite . . . Why are you here, Imelda? It's not to help them . . . Are you the one who really needs help?"

Knowing I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, Imelda's shoulders relaxed, and she shook her head. "I'm here because I'm needed."

"By?"

She smiled at my gentle prodding before flashing another look in Bonnie's direction. "Your friend here screwed up the balance in more ways than one. It appears that my job is not yet complete."

Bonnie took the reprimand the way it was intended and ducked her head. See. Witches all stuck together. I'd been saying the same thing all along, but all it took was another witch to say it, and suddenly she was listening to what was being said . . . but then she hadn't exactly been willing to listen to Imelda after her first visit. Maybe it was just harder to ignore when the consequences for bringing Jeremy back were starting to do things like try to kill her best friend . . . Still, I didn't believe that was why Imelda was here. She had to have ulterior motives, and there's a reason I hadn't wanted her to know anything about this Original Witch. 

My guess was that if Vicki had been trying to kill Elena, then it was for the same reason she'd said that for Klaus to make his hybrids, Elena had to die. The witch on the other side told Vicki to do it as her price for helping Vicki get a foothold on this side of the divide, and really, it made sense if you were a witch, because if vampires were an abomination to the natural order, then hybrids had to be too. Of course, Imelda would want to get in on that, because she'd want to stop hybrids from being created too, but something told me there was more, or she would've already found a way to kill Elena. "Says who?" Everyone at the table's attention turned to me, and I elaborated, "You didn't happen to contact anyone on the other side who said, 'Imelda, you should get on down to Mystic Falls. Your services are required, and your payment will be in the work itself.'" 

Elena and Bonnie rolled their eyes. Imelda smiled. "You see, now that, Elena, is something you simply cannot fake."

My eyes narrowed marginally as I glanced in Elena's direction. Had she gone to Imelda pretending to be me? After all the grief I'd gotten for pretending to be her, she suddenly decided it was a good idea to do the same thing? I should be annoyed or angry for the double standards, but really I just found it amusing. "You tried to be me?" Glancing at Imelda with a grin, I said, "Did she not get the charming personality quite right? I bet she went with all snark all the time, didn't she?"

"She's just not as quick. You've either got it, or you don't."

I frowned slightly. "There's no need to be mean, Imelda. That wasn't nice."

"But true nonetheless." 

I rolled my eyes. "What's true is that you are annoyed that she thought she could pull a fast one on you, and now you're being nasty about it. I've got something blocking you from sensing me with your magic, and she doesn't. That'd be a dead give away if she so much as shook your hand . . . Well, that and shaking your hand, because I don't do that, and she's also a doppleganger, so there's that . . . nothing special about me."

"See. Quick."

Taking a slow breath, I observed her. "So, that's a yes on you communing with the Original Witch anyway . . . Who is she?"

Leaning forward across the table from me, Elena whispered, "We don't have time for this. Ask her what she thinks is going to happen, so we can fix - "

Was she really interrupting me when I was doing my thing here? I glanced at her and said, "Since you've kept me out of the loop on all of this, then you can ask her that yourself when I'm done."

"You told me to do it myself. You can't get mad at me for - "

"I told you to deal with your boyfriend yourself. If you have dead vampires trying to kill you, then it's probably something you should tell me. You didn't, because your feelings were hurt that I wouldn't let you walk all over me, you big baby. Now stop arguing with me, and pay attention to how this is done. It's time for the grown ups to talk." Holy shit. Did I just say that out loud? Yeah . . . yeah, I'm almost sure I did. Judging by the way her eyes widened before they narrowed as she slumped back in her chair with her arms crossed over her chest, I'd say I definitely had. 

We'd argued quite a few times, and sometimes it became quite heated, or we said the meanest things possible to one another, or both, but I'd never really put her in her place or sounded quite like a big sister annoyed with having to clean up her little sister's mess until now. I'd also never had her simply back off like she did and take on the role of the pouting little sister. That had to be new for her, because I know that she grew up as the oldest in her family. 

I guess that maybe when it came to the supernatural, she was essentially on my turf. Her turf involved dealing with normal people and this town. I'm sure that there was almost a constant turf war going on between us, because my world and hers collided with the supernatural friends she had around her. This was different. Her friends might be vampires, witches, and werewolf-hybrids, but that didn't mean she actually knew anything about vampires, witches, and werewolves beyond the personal connections she had with the people she knew, and the world was so much bigger than that, which meant the balance of power had shifted in my favor . . . at least this time.

My eyes went back to Imelda, and for the first time, I felt like myself around Elena, not angry or bitter or unsure of what to say and do, just me with a job to do, and she wasn't going to get in my way. I could ask Imelda what the Original witch wanted, but I didn't trust Imelda to tell me. If she said anything at all, it'd be so she could send me on a wild goose chase, and I really didn't want that kind of a distraction. What I wanted was to know who this witch was, so I could research her myself and get my answers that way. Imelda smirked before sitting back and playing coy. "I could tell you who she is for a price."

"I could kill you for free, especially since you're here to reset the balance and at a minimum keep hybrids from being created on a large scale, which means my sister's head just might be on your chopping block if whatever you're planning fails. How about we say I don't kill you, and that is your fee paid in full."

"At all?" 

Ooh, she was sure I'd want to kill her if I knew what she was planning. I considered it. It was never good to issue blanket statements of safety for supernatural beings that might some day need killing, particularly if they did indeed go after your sister. Meh, I could always have Damon kill her, but what if she killed Damon, or tried to kill Damon, then I'd have to kill her. The same went for Caroline. Might as well throw in another freebee just in case it was needed. "With four exceptions that I'm keeping to myself to make sure you behave yourself."

Sitting forward, she almost whined, "Eve, that's not a fair price, and you know it." It's times like this when her youthfulness shined brightest. 

I gave her a mischievous grin and said, "Why, because we've come full circle and are right back where we started with no real deal in place? Yeah . . . and yet your price has been met, so spill. Who is the Original Witch?"

Flicking a crumb off the table, she focused on that, as she grumbled, "Who says that was my price?"

"You did when you started negotiating. I countered, and we have a deal."

"You're even more boorish than your father."

Resting my arms on the table and ducking down to try and catch her good eye, I said, "Imelda, I'd help you for free if you needed it, and you know it."

Her shoulders dropped before she sighed and said, "I do . . . and I appreciate it more than you know, but just because you don't value yourself enough to let others know they can't use you whenever they feel like it without a price, doesn't mean I do." 

"So, having a simple conversation with you has come this now, has it? I can respect how you conduct business, but you have priced yourself right out of any meaningful interactions with people. I didn't ask what she wants. I asked who she is. I'd like you to tell me, so we can get onto other more interesting things that don't involve why you're here at all."

"Like if you've seen _The Road_ yet?" 

She could be an all-powerful witch one second, and an insecure child the next, but it wasn't calculated. She was just really messed up after a lifetime of damage, some done to her by the things she hated, and some done by herself. It didn't mean she wasn't calculating, just that the drastic swings in her personality weren't. I guess you could say that Klaus was similar, but Imelda wasn't as paranoid, and she didn't rip people apart the way he did. You just needed to know how to talk to her, like an equal, not an all-powerful witch, and not like she was a victim. And she's probably the only person I knew who'd had even more alone time than me, so movies were a big part of her life too. Giving her the best poker face I could, I answered, "Yep, like that."

Sitting forward, she quickly said, "Have you read the book, because - "

"Imelda." 

My eyebrow ticked up, and she sighed. "How is it that I'm the one paying you now?"

I couldn't help the genuine smile that crept up on my face. "You're not . . . It's called hanging out, Imelda . . . without the expectation of anything in return other than time spent conversing and doing things that are fun."

She sat back with a bit of a pout and said, "I know what hanging out is."

"Yeah? Then maybe you should try it instead of learning everything you know from movies."

She laughed before looking at me, and I knew she was back to being somewhere closer to her age. "Like you're one to talk."

"True." 

I opened my mouth to say something else, and she sat forward to stop me. "Okay, I'll tell you, but you're not going to believe who it is."

She sounded gossipy, and I loved it. "Who is it?"

"I don't know what her name was when she was alive, but I know she has A LOT to answer for from when she was. She's the one who started it all."

My eyes narrowed slightly as I thought about it, and I wasn't entirely sure that she didn't know what the woman's name had been. Imelda must know I planned on putting the research in on this one. If the dead woman wasn't a threat to something important to me, then Imelda wouldn't think I'd want to kill her if I knew what she was planning. I had to be ever mindful of that, and that is why no matter how I interacted with Imelda, I'd never really trust her. "I figured that she's the one who put the curse on Klaus to keep his werewolf side dormant, so she was probably alive 1000 years ago."

Grinning, Imelda responded, "That she was, and that she did, but she was trying to dampen the true scale of her crimes against nature. Even then it wasn't enough for her to truly understand what it is she did . . . at least not until her son killed her, and she's spent a long time watching her children wreak havoc on this world, regretting the choices she made, and learning in death what she didn't understand in life . . . why the balance has to be maintained."

Sitting back as I took that all in, I looked off to the side and shook my head a little disappointed with myself. "I'm such an idiot." Flicking my eyes back to Imelda, I said, "It's all in the name. I should've seen it."

Elena sat forward, clearly intrigued. "What?"

Glancing at Elena, I said, "Well for one, she's their mother . . . Original Witch . . . of the Original Family, and I'm guessing Klaus is the one who killed her . . . probably just one of the consequences for what she actually did." My attention went back to Imelda as I said, "She's the one who turned them into what they are now, isn't she?"

Imelda smirked, and that's all the answer I needed. This was bigger than I'd thought. For Imelda to be working with the witch who actually created vampires, she had to overcome an insurmountable amount of hate for the woman, and that would've been even more difficult than it obviously had been for her to walk outside the door of her house. The timing on it had to have been fast too. She had to have contacted the Original Witch after the phone call she got from Elena and Bonnie telling her they needed her help with Vicki and why. She'd probably intended to tell the Original Witch to back off, but the Original Witch must've had a proposition for her, and she'd given almost no thought to agreeing to it. 

I didn't know what the Original Witch had promised her, but whatever it was had to have been huge, and I knew there's no way she'd tell me. Maybe this Original Witch knew a way to undo what she'd done, and her children could go back to being human again. Maybe the Original Witch knew some kind of cure that would make any vampire a human again. Maybe she knew how to kill her children. And why did Imelda need to be here to do whatever it was she was planning? 

Was the Original Witch buried around here? That'd be an unbelievable boost of power for someone like Imelda to tap into. For a witch to be able to pull off the kind of spell required to create a vampire from scratch, she had to have been one of the most powerful witches that'd ever lived. I'd say the most powerful, but if meeting Klaus had taught me one thing, it was that there was always something bigger and badder out there than you knew . . . Enter Mikael.

Maybe the Original Witch had told Imelda that Klaus would be coming back for Elena, so Imelda wanted to use Elena as bait for some reason. I'd figure all of this out given the time . . . I just didn't know how much time I had or want to do it in front of these three. Sitting back, I exhaled a slow breath before giving Imelda a well intended warning. "Just be careful. I've met three of her children, and if she's the one who raised them, you cannot trust her."

"You don't have to tell me that, but I think I'll take my chances . . . Now about _The Road_. Have you read the book, and - "

Flicking my hand to wave off the question, like she was being ridiculous, I said, "Of course I've read the book . . . I'm still waiting for something like that to happen. It'd be so much easier to navigate this world if almost the entire planet was wiped out. I used to think zombie apocalypse. Now I'm thinking witch armageddon because you magical folks seem to screw up an awful lot - probably create something that'll kill us all." 

She laughed before saying, "My bet's on human-made . . . A nuclear holocaust is still not off the cards or a biological weapon."

Drumming my fingers on the table, I nodded, "Fair point . . . Or it could be nobody's fault and a good old-fashioned pandemic. Something like that would bring you witches down with the rest of us, you know. Guess it's a good thing you live alone out in the middle of nowhere." She laughed, and I smiled before saying, " And yeah, I saw the movie. I actually thought it did a good job of keeping to the spirit of the book."

"Me too! They got the bleakness and the feelings of isolation and desperation just right."


	29. Sisters

I closed the door behind me and bounded down the stairs, but stopped when the door opened, and I heard someone whisper-shout for me to wait. Turning to look at Elena, I sighed. "What?"

"What am I supposed to do? She can't stay here."

Glancing over her shoulder at the house, I answered, "Well, you can't kick her out. You made a deal, and it's one you have to keep. Besides, it would be cruel. Her agoraphobia is genuine. It's a miracle she left her house to come here at all. She doesn't have anywhere else that she can go while she's here, and it's not like she's going to ask for a lift back from a random stranger. She wouldn't book a room in a hotel either. If she did, she may not leave."

Walking down the steps, Elena quietly asked, "What happened to her?"

She seemed to want to know, because she cared, so I said, "I only know what Dad told me. I'm sure her story differs, because she was there, and everything else is just hearsay. I mean, it's obvious vampires did it. The bite marks say that. I don't know how many there were . . . anywhere between 6 and 10 took her when she was about 15 or 16. They wanted to use her for her power, and they thought that since she was young, and only really starting to come into her powers, they could get her to do what they wanted easier than an older witch."

"That's why she makes people pay her for her help." I nodded, a little impressed at how Elena had pieced that together, and then she said, "But she wouldn't do what they wanted her to do, would she?" 

"No. So they tried to force her to do it . . . hence the scars."

Showing more concern for Imelda than she'd ever shown me, Elena asked, "Did they do that to her eye?"

"No . . . she did that to herself, so she could take all the vampires out at once. It was what the spell she came up with required. I can't stress how important it is that Caroline does not come over here while she's here. Imelda won't see who Caroline is. All she'll see is a vampire. Caroline will be dead before you see it coming."

"Is she dangerous?"

"She's powerful . . . That eye of hers gives her the kind of power Klaus and Elijah's witches only wish they had. She may be on par with how powerful Bonnie was when she had access to the power of those dead witches, and her personality fluctuates pretty frequently and without warning, but she's really only violent when it comes to vampires, so you should be all right. Look at it this way. Klaus won't be able to knock on your door anytime soon."

"Really?" She seemed hopeful. 

Nodding, I said, "Yeah . . . but never forget that if she hates vampires, she must hate the idea of hybrids even more, and you cannot trust her not to kill you if she thinks there is no other way to prevent him from getting his hybrids."

Biting the inside of her cheek briefly, Elena nodded before looking back at the house. "So trust her as much as I can trust a witch that hates vampires and hybrids."

"Pretty much . . . And never give her your blood."

Her face turned back in my direction. "You said that earlier. If it's not to make hybrids, then why would she want it?"

"A doppleganger's blood is extremely powerful magic, and it's used in powerful spells. The curse that was put on Klaus - "

"Required my blood to break it."

"Exactly, but it also required a doppleganger's blood to create it."

"Katherine wasn't the first doppleganger."

"No . . . There was at least one other, but maybe more. Elijah said he'd met 3 in his time, but he thought there were some that may have fallen through the cracks . . . Anyway, the point is that you never give your blood to a witch. You have no idea what they're going to use it to do."

"What's so special about it?"

"It's like a binding agent. It's what is needed to tie the whole spell together. Look at the hybrids. Without your blood, the vampire half and the werwolf half tear the hybrid apart, but with your blood, it bridges the gap and makes them a whole entity . . . And if a witch uses your blood, there's a good chance the spell will also be tied to you. Maybe it won't kill you. Maybe it will, but you have no way of knowing which it will be, because they will lie and say whatever they have to do to get your blood from you."

"What if they just take it?"

 _That's why you have me._ "They could try. In fact, I read a book that was pretty much all about the sacrificing of dopplegangers, and - "

"You mean not all dopplegangers look like me?"

"No. There are other lines. Yours is the Petrova line, but that's just because that was Katherine's last name, and she's the most well known from your line." Elena took that all in before nodding slowly, and I looked at her house before turning to leave and said, "Anyway, I doubt Imelda will be here long. She's waiting for something to happen, so you'll ask her for her help again, and when it's done, she'll want to go back home."

"Help with what?"

Turning back to her, I shrugged. "I have no idea. It doesn't really matter. She'll solve the problem and then another one will crop up . . . probably of her own making, and then she'll solve that. It's the end game I'm concerned with trying to figure out, so I can head her off - if it's bad. It may not be."

"But you don't know for sure." I shook my head, and Elena looked at the window to her living room before saying, "It'd be so much easier if Bonnie - "

Not this again. "Elena."

Her shoulders dropped before she looked at me and said, "Imelda told Bonnie if she wants answers, then she needs to talk to her Mom."

Ah, so what'd she'd been thinking had been more about Bonnie not doing what she should, than me doing what I did. I could live with that for a change. "Then that's what Bonnie should do."

"Bonnie's Mom left when she was little, and she never came back."

"I know. That's why her Grams was the one who had to fill her in on all things witch." Elena gave me an annoyed look, but I stopped her before she could say anything. "And I can understand why Bonnie may not want to talk to her Mom, but if it's the journey she has to take, then it's the one she has to take. Nobody said self-reflection was easy, and it shouldn't be. Once you kill somebody, it's kind of time to grow up."

Her eyes narrowed, but instead of saying what I thought she would, she said, "Can I ask you something?"

"Go for it."

"Did you mean it?" 

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Stepping closer before glancing over her shoulder, she looked at me and whispered, "When you said you'd kill Imelda?"

"Yes."

Why'd she look angry? "She's a little strange, and she might be dangerous to vampires, but she's sweet, and she's been through a lot. You can't just kill her if she does something you don't like."

Oh. "And if she kills someone because I don't? Is that okay, or is it as bad as me killing them myself, because I didn't do anything to stop her and could have?"

That's definitely the way I'd felt when I was on the road with Klaus. Elena's eyes tightened into a glare as she answered, "You don't have to stoop to her level."

"You don't get second chances in this game, Elena."

"You could find another way . . . tie her up or something. You don't have to kill her."

"And when she gets out and comes after me or people I care about for retribution? What then? Am I supposed to keep tying her up and giving her chances to come after me?"

"If that's what it takes. It's the right thing."

"Yeah? Is that what you think about Katherine? You wouldn't kill her if you had the chance? Or are you going to keep letting her come back again and again to go after all your friends . . . maybe your brother if it fits into one of her plans?"

I think I had her briefly until she said, "There's a big difference between wanting to kill someone and actually doing it."

"Mm . . . but you're fine with letting Stefan and Damon doing the killing for you, aren't you? It keeps your hands clean and conscience clear. Like you didn't kill that Noah-vampire when he came after you at the school. They did. And you didn't have to deal with Mason when you went looking for the moon stone. Damon did. I'm sure I could think of other instances if - " 

"How does you killing Imelda make you any different than those other vampire hunters you were talking about?"

"Because I'm not going in there and killing her right now, not that they would. That black and white way of thinking - that's Imelda all the way. It's why vampire-hunters go to her. If she's here long enough, you'll see what I'm talking about."

"But how could you kill her? How can you be friends and - "

"We're not friends."

"That's not what I saw in there."

"You think she wouldn't find a way to kill me if I got in her way? She would in a second."

"You're wrong."

"If you really believe that, then you're naive." 

"I'm not. You don't talk to someone the way you were with her and then turn around and kill that person."

"You want the truth?"

"It's the least you owe me."

I owed her? I couldn't help the glare, but I did my best to stay calm. "When you are truly alone, and you have to be either because it's how you were raised or you don't trust anyone or you're on the run or you're afraid to leave your house, whatever the reason, you do one of two things when you meet someone new. You either push them away, and I am a champ at that, or the part of you that is desperate not to be alone forms an instant connection with the people you meet . . . that one I'm not so good at when it comes to normal everyday people, but when I meet someone who is as equally alone, it happens sometimes. This is only the third time I've met Imelda . . . One more time than Bonnie has . . . We are not friends."

Not bothering to hide her suspicion, Elena asked, "But you connect with her. That has to mean something to you."

"Well, I can connect with Katherine, Klaus, or Imelda, but it doesn't mean I trust any of them not to kill me. That connection doesn't mean we're colluding, or I'm teaming up with them, and it's not because I'm a monster too . . . We're just in the same lonely club, and I'm not talking about an 'I'm lonely because it's Saturday night, and I have nothing to do," kind of lonely. It is a deep-seeded feeling that you are truly alone in this world, because you are."

Still trying to prove her point, as an idea occurred to her, she quickly said, "What about Rose? Damon said you connected with her, and you didn't want her to die. You went and killed a whole bunch of other people when she did die, so - "

"Werewolves."

"What?"

"I killed a pack of werewolves, not people."

"That doesn't matter. It doesn't mean you have the right to - "

Well, this had quickly derailed into an 'it doesn't matter what you say, I'm not going to listen to any of it,' kind of argument. "And Jules had a right to rip those campers apart? She had a right to put Rose through what she did or make Rose kill that innocent man by the school? We aren't playing by the rules you're used to playing by. We're playing by their rules, and they only have two: kill or be killed."

"Then what about Damon?"

"What about him?"

"Would you kill him?"

"No. I wouldn't kill him anymore than I would've killed Mom."

Stepping back slightly as she looked off to the side in thought, Elena's eyes narrowed before her attention came back to me. "And why is that?"

It instantly made me angry. She didn't get to ask me questions like that. She hadn't earned it. "Because he's my best friend and the only person I completely trust." To get the topic off of him, I added, "I'd never kill Caroline either. They're my friends, and they've worked hard to be that."

I turned to walk away, and she said, "And Bonnie?"

It made me stop. "She is not my friend."

"No, she's _my_ best friend, and you didn't kill her."

No, I just took something incredibly important away from her. Glancing at Elena over my shoulder, I said, "What's your real question, Elena? Do you want to know if I'd kill you?"

Seeming uncomfortable with me coming right out and saying it, she shrugged a shoulder. "Well?"

Half the point of me wanting to be in that stupid ritual instead of her was to protect her, and the entire reason I'd crossed Klaus was to get her body back from him, so how did she not know the answer to this? She still didn't believe most of what I said, did she? I may not like her or trust her or really know how to act around her, but I'd die to protect her. Always would. She was my sister even if I wasn't hers. Rolling my eyes, I turned to leave, because in no way was I going to say that to her. I wasn't entirely sure she wouldn't try to use it against me again. 

A couple of seconds later, she ran around me to block my exit. "That's not an answer."

"Elena, stop it." 

"No, why won't you just tell me if - " 

_Make her retreat._ "Because I don't trust you."

Looking offended, she quickly exclaimed, "YOU don't trust ME?." I stepped around her, and she said, "We're supposed to be sisters."

Whipping around to look at her, I quickly responded, "When it suits you." Stepping closer, I added, "And don't play that card with me unless you really mean it. I won't allow you to use it to manipulate me ever again. If you need help, I will be there, but we have a long way to go before we're even friends," before turning on my heel and getting out of there before either of us could make it worse.


	30. Would You Really Give Anything for Just One More Day?

"Good morning, sweetheart." My eyes threatened to open, but I let them flutter shut. I missed that voice more than I let myself dwell on for very long. If the only time I got to hear it was in dreams, then I was staying asleep as long as possible.

"Come on, Eve . . . It's time to wake up."

"I don't want to."

"Well, we can't always get what we want, and we have a busy day ahead of us."

I groaned. "Do I have to go to school?"

"Absolutely not . . . If I had my way, you wouldn't go back there again . . . A structured environment really isn't right for you. It's holding you back. You learn so much more when it's at your own pace, and you don't have to wait for the simpletons in your classes to understand something you learned in the first 5 minutes or already knew."

My eyes flicked open, and I laid motionless as I stared at the wall in front of me. Something wasn't right. My heart started pounding, like it was going to beat out of my chest, and I didn't know if I was more afraid to look over my shoulder and find nothing there or see what I was beginning to suspect was there. "Mom?"

"The one and only. Now why don't you take a shower, and I'll see what there is in the kitchen for breakfast." I felt something nudge my shoulder and immediately shot up and scurried away from it until my back hit the headboard, and I found myself staring into the face of my Mom, who was sitting on my bed, like it was normal for her to be there.

I don't know if tears of hope or tears of dread were in my eyes as I said, "My Mom doesn't make breakfast." 

Momentarily looking sad, she nodded before trying to smile. "I know . . . it's been a while, but I can make a mean waffle . . . you remember?"

A tear slid down my cheek as I nodded. "You learned how to make them in one of your home economics classes in high school." 

Smiling a little more brightly, she said, "That's right," before she got up. "I don't know how much time we have, so don't stay in there too long." I watched her walk out my bedroom door a little mystified by the entire experience and then looked down at myself to see if I was really sitting up in bed. Yeah, I was, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. I could be sitting up in my dream, but the way my heart was thumping didn't seem like something I'd sleep through. Maybe the shower would feel real? Or not. Then I might have answer? Or not. I was in and out as fast as possible even if I wasn't sure what was going on right now. The water felt real, but I wouldn't know for sure until . . . No. No, she wouldn't be there. 

I have no idea how I could ever possibly think that had been real. I almost had myself talked out of it ever happening. It was just the last vestiges of sleep that must have made my brain a little fuzzy or . . . something? I wandered down the hall slowly, like I was conscious of the fact that when I got to the kitchen she might not be there and wanted to prolong that disappointment for as long as possible. My pace quickened when I heard a loud thud come from that direction, and coming around the corner, I found myself faced with a situation I couldn't quite comprehend, but one that definitely made me say, "Mom! Put him down!." 

She had Damon picked up off the floor and slammed against the wall by his throat. With a short growl, I knew all to well, she spat out, "With pleasure," before throwing him across the room, and he went flying past me into the fridge and landed on the floor in a heap. 

I immediately went to him and helped him to his feet before scrambling to stand in front of him as a shield when I saw her fast approaching. Putting my hands out in front of me as a signal for her to stop, I almost begged. "Mom, please, don't . . . Please." If she'd never hurt me, then it was safe to say that I'd never hurt her . . . not even to keep her from killing someone. I just couldn't. She was my Mom . . . That didn't mean I didn't have a lot of experience trying to talk her down though. "This is _his_ house. He has every right to be here."

Taking me by the arm and pulling me away from him without taking her eyes from his face, she snarled, "And you are _my_ daughter," before dragging me over to the island and flicking a warning look at him that said to back off as she started getting whatever ingredients she'd found ready. This was the more possessive side of her that I'd come to know, particularly when it came to my Dad. My eyes went to Damon, and he looked as confused and caught off guard as I felt, but if he could see her, then she had to really be here, didn't she? Or was I dreaming that too? 

The look he gave me asked if she was really standing in his kitchen, and I shrugged, because I didn't know. He relaxed before nodding, like he was answering his own question for me, because he knew she was, and he wanted me to know it too. His unspoken question had been more of a rhetorical one, I guess, and then he tilted his head in her direction. He wanted me to ask what she was doing here.

I looked at her. Her head was bowed, and her expression suggested she was fully concentrated on something else now, like what'd just happened had been forgotten, as she wrote something down on a piece of paper. I knew that look. It's the one she always had when she was researching her lore. "Mom?"

"Yes, baby?"

"Are you really here?"

Smiling, without taking her eyes from her task, she answered, "Of course I am."

Damon stepped forward and without looking at him, I put my hand up as a signal for him to wait. If he started being a smart ass now to push her into a better answer, then he'd completely derail her moment of calm. "But . . . but I thought you died."

She paused in scribbling what she'd been writing, but didn't look at me. Looking ashamed for the briefest of moments, she nodded. "I did . . . but I'm here now." Flashing me a smile over her shoulder, she said, "So, let's make the most of it, while we can . . . okay?"

I felt myself nod before I knew what I was doing, and she happily went back to writing on her piece of paper. My eyes briefly stung with the threat of tears, but I quickly blinked them away as I watched her and asked, "What are you doing?"

"I am giving you my recipe . . . It's something, I, as your mother, should have done." She flicked another dangerous look at Damon, as she said, "And now I'm rectifying that." So, she'd at least seen Damon's cooking classes with me that we'd been doing regularly since my road trip with Klaus, was jealous about it, and I guess now she wanted in on that experience? Looking back down at her sheet of paper she said, "And it's the only recipe I know by heart . . . but I used to be pretty great at it, didn't I?" 

She gave me a look that said she was fearful she hadn't been. She hadn't done it while she was a vampire, and truth be told, when she was human, the only time she'd been able to do it was for birthdays until I was maybe 11 or 12 when she'd been called into work, hadn't been able to do it that birthday, and hadn't done it since. Nodding as I tried to give her a smile, I answered, "Yeah . . . yeah, you were." 

Her shoulders relaxed as she carried on with her recipe, and I glanced at Damon. He pointed for the door, and I nodded. I'd be okay with her, and he needed to find out what was happening. I didn't want it to be over the way he probably did, but I did want to know how long I had with her. He started heading for the door, but before he got to the archway, she haphazardly said, "Don't go near Elena's house. That witch will kill you if she sees you. Find the Bennet witch . . . the dead one. She'll probably be with her granddaughter," without looking up from her work. 

He paused, threw another confused look in my direction, and then walked over to us. "How about you tell me what the hell is going on, Isobel, and save me the trouble."

"No, I don't think I will." Putting her pen down and looking up at him with another threatening expression, she said, "I won't stop you from doing what needs to be done, but I'm not going to help you figure it out either. It's Mother-Daughter Day, and I don't want you around to distract her." He opened his mouth to argue with her, and her attitude changed as she quietly implored, "You get her tomorrow and whatever days there are after that. Let me have today . . . Let her have today." She didn't say please, but it was implied in her tone, and his mouth closed as he took a step back to look at me. His eyes flitted back to her a few moments later before he nodded, and then he was gone in a flash. Her shoulders relaxed as she turned back towards the counter with a happy sigh. "Now. If I can do this, you can. First, you mix together the flour, salt, baking powder and sugar."

She went through it all step-by-step, and we did it together over and over again until I got it right. I ate, and then she wanted to hear me play my piano. Sitting at my bench, I placed my fingers on the keys and started a song before asking, "Do you know this one?" 

A smile slowly crept up on her face as she said, " _Perfect Day._ " 

"Yeah, I just learned it."

I went back to focusing on the keys, and she said, "Will you sing it for me?"

My attention immediately went back to her. Had she heard Dad say something about that the last time I saw him? "Mom, I - "

"I should've never said that. I was having a bad day, and I didn't think. I never meant for you to stop altogether . . . Sing it if you want." She seemed so earnest that I couldn't really turn her down, so I did . . . with the exception of the 'you're going to reap just what you sow,' part at the end. I didn't think that was probably a very good thing for a dead person to hear. When I was done, I looked up at her, and her eyes were watery as she smiled through it and said, "Will you play it?"

I should be angry. There was a thread of it somewhere deep down. How could she just waltz back into my life, like she wasn't dead, and I hadn't lost her, but more than that, how could she come back and try to be who she was before she was a vampire or who she thought she should've been all along? She'd never cooked with me when she was human. She'd stopped me playing the piano when she was a vampire. What was she trying to prove? Was she seriously trying to make right the mistakes she thought she'd made but hadn't been able to see until she was dead? I should feel that anger more, and push back against what she wanted, but I was either in more of a state of perpetual shock by her presence than I'd thought, or I just couldn't bring myself to feel that, because she was here, and none of that mattered, did it? 

Biting my bottom lip, I looked back down at the keys. I knew what song she wanted. It's the first song I learned how to play . . . the one my Dad had been talking about when he said she played a simple little melody to get me going. Of course I hadn't learned more than about 4 or 5 notes that first day, but I've been told I played them over and over again until she got tired of hearing it and had to teach me 4 or 5 more notes to add to the others, and it kept going from there, a little more every day . . . just the basic song, not even with two hands. She wasn't a musician herself, so I have no idea how she even knew how to play those first 4 or 5 notes, but I guess when she was younger, it'd been one of her favorite songs, so she must've been messing around on a piano somewhere and figured out the melody, or at least those 4 or 5 notes. 

After she started teaching me, she had to figure out the rest of the melody in her free time, so she could keep showing me what to play until I had the entire melody down . . . At some point, I learned to play properly and more songs than just this one. Most likely because she'd had to teach herself the basics, so she could stay ahead of me enough to be my teacher, the way she had with all my schooling, and eventually I surpassed her in being able to play. She's probably the only one who knew when that was, because I didn't. Anyway, it all started with this and after I learned to really play, it became something of a tradition for us that on her birthday, I'd play this song as a present, and every year it'd be the same song, but different, as my ability grew and my arrangements became more difficult. That all ended following her fight with Dad after she turned, and now she wanted me to play it again? I hadn't played it in years. 

Exhaling a slow breath, I nodded before hesitantly putting my fingers on the keys. I could do this . . . just focus on the keys and not how playing this song made me feel. _Friday I'm in Love_ by The Cure coming right up. When it was over my eyes darted in her direction, and she grinned before saying, "Thank you . . . You have no idea how much that means to me," before she teared up again and looked towards the door saying, "I'd love to stay in here and listen to you play all day, but there are so many things I want to do." Holding her hand out to me, she smiled again. "Come on."

Next, she took me outside, and while we were walking the grounds, she asked, "You're determined to go to that school?" 

"I owe it to myself to try."

"You could do it for a couple of months to get the experience of having gone and just skip straight ahead to college at the start of next semester. I think you'd flourish in that kind of an environment." 

She sounded hopeful and uncertain, because she didn't really know if I would, and for the first time, I actually considered college. I didn't consider it for me, but I think I realized that maybe I owed it to her to go, because she'd had to give up her dream of going for me, and now she couldn't do it, but I could. "I'll think about it." My forehead creased as I admitted, "I actually have no idea what I'd study."

"Music?"

"I don't know. I love music, but I don't want to study it, like that, or that'll strip the enjoyment away."

"You could do occult studies. You've already got a good idea of what's involved in that, and it'd help you with your hunting."

"So go to college to become a better hunter?"

"Yeah, if that's what you've decided to do, then you can do the normal thing of going to college to further your career the way everyone else does even if your career is far from normal."

She made a valid point - a very valid point. I looked at her with something of an epiphany, and she smiled. She always did know how to sell things to me. "You know most vampire-hunters are always on the move. They don't stay in one place very long."

Knowing what I was really saying, she nodded. "I know, but you're not most vampire-hunters, are you? For starters, they can't stay in one place, because it isn't safe for them to do it, but you live with vampires, sweetheart. Something tells me you can afford to stay in one place. The other reason they're always on the move is because they go where the work takes them, but there's no rule to say that you can't stay in one place and watch over a state or two. You could go on business trips further from home when you see something important that needs to be handled, but lord knows this town has an above normal level of supernatural activity, so something tells me you won't be short of work if you make it your home."

I smiled briefly, feeling better than I'd felt in a while. It felt a little like a plan was coming together for my future. Returning my smile, Mom said, "Now, if you're serious about going to that school, then I think you and I should go through a few things," before she had me run through the cheers that I was supposed to be learning and gave me pointers. 

Apparently, my cartwheels were fine. She and I had worked on those when she was alive, but my round offs and hand springs were a little frenetic, and she wanted me to slow them down. "But if I use them hunting, then I'm going to have to be as fast as possible, aren't I? I mean vampires aren't exactly slow."

Breathing out a quick laugh she answered, "You're not fighting vampires out there on the field, Eve. You're energizing the crowd, so they can energize your team, and if you're team sucks, you're giving the crowd something to to watch that isn't your team losing."

"Well, that seems stupid."

"Well don't tell anyone on the squad that . . . and what you need is control. Slow it down, or if you do this when you're hunting, you'll fall on your face, and then you'll be dead . . . and make sure before you even think about using these on a hunt, you've practiced doing them with your little blonde vampire friend during training . . . She's getting a lot out of it, but it is making you a whole lot faster, so you're getting something out of it too. You should tell her that. That's what friends do."

I nodded, while I took that under advisement, before exhaling a slow breath and trying again. When I was done, I looked at Mom, and she smiled. "Better . . . Do it again." 

We worked on it until the sun went down, but I don't think either one of us wanted to go back inside. I took her to where Dad's pyre had been, so she could see it. I was pretty sure she'd been around since she died, because she kept telling me things I should or shouldn't do, like she'd been watching, so she must've known where it was and had seen what happened that day too. Wrapping my arms around my waist to stave off the chill of dusk, I glanced at her over my shoulder. "Do you know if this is what he was planning to do if it'd just been me in the sacrifice?"

Her lips drew into a straight line as she shook her head. "No, but it wouldn't surprise me if he had . . . It'd explain why he kept taking you hunting even after I turned."

"You didn't want him to anymore?"

"No. He was right. You needed to learn how to protect yourself. You couldn't always just rely on him, because what if something happened to him, or what if something happened when you were with me, and he wasn't there? What if I wasn't there, because I was working? What if something happened to," her breath caught in her throat before she said, "to both of us? But it was too much. He was taking my little girl away bit by bit . . . Every time you were with him, you came back a little different, and he couldn't see it - probably because the life he was living was changing him too, but I couldn't just keep him from seeing you. You needed your father . . . and I wanted you to have being a vampire as an option, but every time you came back with a bite, or after you killed one or saw what they did to their victims, I knew there was a slimmer chance of you choosing it as an option. It didn't have to be all monster all the time, but how could I just say that and have you believe it if all you saw was the bad . . . So, I turned, thinking I could show you it would be okay . . . and I found a way to make sure I didn't have to leave you to work anymore, and if anything happened when you were with me instead of him, then I could handle it, so you wouldn't have to hunt anymore . . . and those aren't the only reasons I turned. I did get more information as a vampire . . . but I think maybe I did the opposite of what I'd really wanted . . . I showed you how much it would change you, and you saw how much I hated it. It took away any chance of this as a real possibility for you." 

Taking a shaky breath, she looked at me, and I felt a couple of tears fall, but I couldn't say anything past the lump in my throat. I'd thought I knew the reasons she'd turned, but she really had done this for me, not the information, and not Elena. I'd be lying if I said it didn't hurt. She did this to herself because of me, and she'd been desperate about it because of what I was becoming. What was I supposed to say to that? Swallowing, I couldn't keep the emotion out of my voice as I said, "But you also gave me back a heart . . . It taught me it's not all black and white . . . It wasn't a waste, Mom." 

Struggling to keep it together, she looked away from me and back towards the ashes as she said, "Your father loved you . . . If this is what he was planning, then he would've wanted you to be able to protect yourself after he was gone, and he would've wanted you to be able to protect yourself from me, which is why I think he kept taking you on hunts, and after I turned, I wasn't as concerned with the injuries as I should have been. I was more concerned with him taking you from me . . . and I know he pushed you away . . . maybe it was to make it easier for you when he was gone, but I think part of it was because of me. You lived with me, and he hated what I'd become, so maybe some of that rubbed off on you, and I let him do it, because I thought it'd keep you with me instead of going to live with him . . . He had his plan, and I had mine . . . I guess he got his way, but I don't think he really thought about how difficult this was going to be for you to do all on your own . . . The important thing is that I know he loved you, and wherever he is now, he still does . . . we both do. Never doubt that."

Trying to wipe the drops off my face that wouldn't stop coming, I nodded and after a short gasp asked, "Why aren't you with Elena?"

Giving the pile of ash a sad smile she answered, "I know I'm not her mother. I'm yours, and I didn't do enough when I was alive to make sure you knew that."

"You did. You just - "

Cutting me off, she shook her head. "I didn't Eve, and I think we both know that. You thought I paid more attention to the books than you, and I did. Even when you researched with me just to get some of my time, I was still more focused on reading than you, and it wasn't all just so I could figure out our problem. It was for me . . . I just wanted something that was for me, and after I found out about this whole other world I knew nothing about, I was fascinated by it, but I neglected you . . . And I know you thought I paid more attention to my invisible daughter than you, so what did that make you, less than invisible? I'm sorry, and I know that's not enough." Tears swarmed in her eyes before she looked around her in a panic, as she said, "I can't make it right in a day."

Choking out a sob, I quickly said, "Mom, you don't have to make anything right . . . It's okay. I'll be okay . . . I mean, that's why you're still here, isn't it? You couldn't find peace, because you had unfinished business . . . and I'm it, right?" 

Stepping closer, so she could wrap me up in her arms, she cried, "I love you so much Eve . . . I should've let you see it more." Taking a few deep breaths, she finally said, "And you've lost too much as it is. I don't want you to lose any more . . . So listen to me carefully. Damon Salvatore is dangerous, cocky, and careless . . . But as much as I hate to admit it, he wants what I wanted for you. Sweetheart, he keeps you human. That's why I can forgive him all the rest, but never forget that he needs to be put in his place every now and then, or it's in his nature to walk all over you . . . And as long as Klaus is alive, then he cannot know about you and Damon. You're safe in the boarding house. Klaus's sister will sympathize with you, so she won't say a word to Klaus about it even if he asks. Stefan hasn't been compelled to spy on you two, because it hasn't even crossed Klaus' mind that it may be a problem for him, and he will see it as a problem, which is why not a soul outside of the residents of the boarding house can know . . . Now, here is the important part. Despite the danger he presents, you must do whatever it is that you have to do to protect Klaus." She pulled back to look at me and put her hands on my shoulders before saying, "Klaus cannot die, or you will lose Damon. Do you understand me?" 

She looked so serious. I nodded, and opened my mouth to ask why, but then she was gone, and it took a couple of seconds for me to register that I couldn't feel her anymore. Looking around, I didn't see her. My face crumpled, as my chest started heaving in short gasps, like I couldn't breath. My hand automatically went to her daylight necklace as my knees gave out, and I sobbed in the dirt near what was left of the ashes of my Dad. Getting her back for a day and then having her just disappear like that after all the things she'd said and done hurt worse than the first time I lost her, and now I didn't know if she'd been able to find any peace.


	31. More Than Just Useful

Walking back into the house, my face was caked in mud from where my tears had mixed with the dirt. I felt a little dead inside, because at some point, I had to shut it off, so I could get up, and start getting on with my life, which is why, it was with unseeing eyes, I made my way through the house to my room. The house appeared empty. Instead of a shower, I felt like a bath was what was needed to wash away today. A shower felt too quick, and maybe I wanted to savor my numbness a little while before soaking it all away. I don't know how long I'd been in there. Long enough for the puffiness around my eyes to have gone down and my face and hair to be clean. 

And apparently, I'd been in there long enough to feel a sharp twinge of annoyance when the door to my bedroom was kicked in hard enough for it to come flying off its hinges and land on the floor next to my bed, or I'm assuming that's what happened. I didn't exactly have my bathroom door open, because when you have at least one vampire with free reign to come and go as he pleases, you get really good at closing your bathroom door when you're in there. 

Climbing out of the tub, I took my time drying off and getting dressed in a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt. Whoever it was could wait until I was good and ready to talk to them. Stepping out of my bathroom, I looked at my bedroom door, and just as I suspected, it was lying on the floor. So much for privacy. My eyes flicked in the direction of where the door used to be, as I climbed on my bed to brush my hair and opened my lap top. I would've expected it to be the other one. _What does she want?_

"You weren't at school today." Sure. She used a battering ram of some kind to get my door open, so she could state the obvious. Shaking my head, I typed 'occult studies' into the search engine. Might as well look into what colleges around here offered that as a major. I can't imagine it would be too easy to find. Filing her nails, as she leaned against the wall outside my room, Rebekah muttered, "Which means you missed practice too . . . I thought you were made of stronger stuff than that. You should've been able to last at least until - "

"I haven't quit."

Focusing on her nails, as she smirked, because she finally got a response, Rebekah said, "Who said anything about quitting? It's only been a week, and you were a no-show."

Waving that off, while I focused on my laptop, I responded, "Caroline won't kick me out of the squad."

"Oh, but she'll have no choice if she wants to keep her captaincy. What would the other girls think if she showed favoritism . . . I mean more than she already has, because really, you shouldn't be on the squad at all, since you missed tryouts."

Still not thinking her important enough to look at any more than I already had to know who was at my door, I said, "And I'm sure that's what you used my absence to sell them . . . bet you forgot to mention that you also missed tryouts."

"Doesn't matter. At least I show up. All the private coaching lessons in the world can't save you now."

She started to walk away after delivering her news, and I felt the need to say, "It was my Mom."

I saw her stop out of the corner of my eye, but still didn't look directly at her. "What was?"

"The woman who was training with me outside . . . It was my Mom. She used to be a cheerleader."

"I thought you parents were dead."

"They are." 

I finally looked at her, and she was appraising me. "You're not lying, are you?" I guess that at the very least, the Queen of Intuition should be able to glean that I wasn't messing with her. Biting the inside of my cheek, I shook my head. "Where is she now?"

I shrugged a shoulder. "I think she's gone."

Coming back to stand in my doorway, she asked, "Well, what did she want?"

"To make up for a lifetime of mistakes in a day."

She seemed confused, but that was becoming overshadowed by anger. "Well, what makes you so special? 1000 years, and I've never had - "

"I think it was your Mom's doing."

That made her stop. Her anger quickly cooled, as her head tilted to the side in confusion. "Why would you think my mother gave your mother back to you for a day?"

"She's the Original Witch, isn't she?"

"Yeah. So?"

Sighing, I put my laptop on the bed next to me, as I swung my legs over the side of the mattress and said, "Do you really not pay attention to anything going on around you other than what you're going to wear or how your hair looks or what your brother's hybrid is doing or how you can screw me or Caroline over? There's a whole lot more going on than whatever is in the little bubble you've created for yourself."

"Is this why your sister and her little friends were here snooping around Damon's room when I got home?"

"Probably . . . Whatever caused it ended, so they probably put a stop to it."

"Because they were jealous?"

She was being genuine for a change, and I knew that would probably end in an instant when her inner bitch decided to rear its ugly head again, but as long as I expected it, I wouldn't be bothered by it when she said something snide and then walked off again. "No." Taking my phone off of the nightstand next to my bed, I looked at it and said, "12 missed calls . . . they left a few messages. I haven't listened to them yet, but you don't get 12 missed calls if everything is fine."

I pushed play on the first voice mail from Jeremy and put it on loud speaker. "Eve, where are you? We have a problem."

Rebekah's eyebrows rose as she said, "So, I'm guessing it wasn't just your Mom that made a come back."

I muttered, "I'm thinking not," as I pushed the next voice mail from Jeremy. "Elena wasn't sure if you've talked to Damon, but she wants me to tell you to hold off on doing anything, because Lexi is here, and she wants to fix Stefan."

"Who is Lexi?"

"Nobody that should make you jealous. She was Stefan's best friend and his sobriety coach. Damon killed her."

Seeming to be slowly drawn in by the intrigue, Rebekah looked at my phone. "Well if anyone needs fixing, it's him. I am so over him until he stops being mean to me . . . What's on the next one?"

Again Jeremy. "I don't have time to explain, but you need to get Damon to tell you where he put the necklace and bring it to my house."

Rebekah's eyes narrowed. "What necklace?"

Shrugging, I said, "I know as much as you do. You said they were here looking around Damon's room. I'm guessing it was to try and find it if he knew where it was."

She nodded to my phone again to signal that she wanted me to continue, and this time it was a message from Damon. "I held them off as long as I could, but I think maybe you should start saying your goodbyes . . . The tomb vampires are - It doesn't matter. Call me when it's done. I have something I want to show you."

"Who are the tomb vampires?"

I almost smiled at her interest, but still wasn't quite feeling up to it. "There were 27 vampires locked in a tomb here over 150 years ago. They got out a few months ago, and now they're all dead. I'm guessing they were running amok around town. It had to have left a bad impression on them."

Her eyes widened. "So the town was under siege by ghosts, probably the most exciting thing I've heard of in far too long, and I missed it?"

"Sounds like."

"Why do you think my Mother was involved?"

I didn't know quite how to answer that and taking a deep breath didn't really get me any closer to a suitable answer. "Well, for one, she's up to something. Jeremy died, and Bonnie brought him back. Since then he's been able to see his dead girlfriends. Your Mom has been backing one of them by giving her enough extra power to make her break windows, and she told her how to come back . . . a witch wasn't needed to do it. The girl got her brother to do it, but the price was that she had to kill Elena. She's gone now, but the witch who made her go talked to your Mom, and now she's hanging around waiting for something . . . something like - "

"A break down in the wall separating the living from the dead." I nodded, and for a moment Rebekah didn't look like she could breath. "And I missed it. If she was here, then - "

"Unless you didn't."

"Why would you say that?"

"A massive jail break of ghosts would be an excellent way for one to slip through and stay if that ghost planned it and knew how to stay."

"So, she might still be here?"

"Maybe."

"Why hasn't she come to see me?"

"I don't know." If my Mom was here to right the wrongs she felt she'd committed when she was alive, then I guess maybe Rebekah's Mom was too. My mother felt her wrongs were all done to me . . . and I was beginning to think that Rebekah's mother felt the same way about her own children, but not for the same reasons, particularly when I took into account what Imelda had said. I wasn't going to tell the girl standing in front of me that her mother felt her wrongs were in turning her children into the monsters she'd been watching for 1000 years or that her mother was more interested in what she was planning to rectify that mistake than actually spending time with her children.

"Well, what good are you then?"

Guess that's what being moderately nice got you. My worth wasn't tied up in how useful I was to other people, and her tone immediately angered me. "Not much right now . . . I'm sure with your 1000 years of experience, you can figure it out. Now if you don't mind . . . I'd like to be alone. I'd close my door, but you sort of broke it."

As she stomped off in the direction of her own room, all I could think was that I was here to help, not serve, something the others might do well to remember considering the number of times I'd been called. Talking to Elena or Bonnie about anything was almost impossible without an argument breaking out, but the second they needed something, I apparently got a call now . . . just not a direct call. Jeremy was the go between, and I was like some kind of mercenary that he'd call in as needed. Well I would be a mercenary if I expected payment, which I didn't, and I guess I did tell Elena that I'd be there if she needed help, so that she had anyone call was an improvement, but at the same time, I hadn't been there, and I can't say I was sorry that I hadn't been, because I wasn't. 

Seeing my Mom again might have re-opened old wounds and created fresh new ones, but at least I'd seen her, and in death she hadn't been a slave to her need for blood. She'd been somewhere in between the mother I'd lost when she turned and the mother I'd lost when she burned to ash in the sun. I missed both mothers, but I'd been missing the one that'd been dead longer more than I'd let myself dwell on for very long, because what had been done had been done and couldn't be undone. I'd still had her. She'd just been enhanced. 

When I was in a fit state to do it again, I would go back to helping the others, but right now I just wanted to be left alone. Turning to look at my laptop, I had a second thought. Being alone didn't sound all that great either. I might call Damon to find out what he wanted to show me. I'm guessing it was something to take my mind off of my Mom disappearing, but at least with him, I wouldn't feel used. I'd feel like I was working with my partner on something, and if my head wasn't with it enough to pull my fair share, he'd pick up the slack until I felt more like me.


	32. You Keep Me Human

Apparently, I hadn't given Mason that much peace on his deathbed, because he showed up at the Mystic Grill. Damon had gone there to drink, while he waited for my Mom to leave, and Mason went there specifically looking for him, which was more than a little odd. Of all the people he could've gone to see, why Damon? Following Damon through a cave, I asked, "Why was he still here? I thought he found peace. I mean that's the entire reason I killed him - so he could find it. If he didn't want to die, then he should've said something before - "

"How much peace could he really find if he was worried about what was going to happen to Tyler? That's as much why he had you kill him as anything - to buy you time to do something about Katherine before she got to Tyler - or something like that." Damon rolled his eyes, and I looked at him. 

"He was mad that you screwed it up, wasn't he?"

"He might've said something like that." Using a different voice to mock Mason, he muttered, "It was all for nothing . . . just couldn't control yourself long enough for my death to mean anything." Going back to his normal voice as he argued with a dead guy who wasn't even there, he said, "Here's a tip. Don't die thinking it'll mean something. All it means is that you're dead."

Ouch. "That was a bit harsh."

"Oh, I forgot. I'm talking to the Wishful Martyr."

Glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, I muttered, "What's got you in a mood?"

"Think I've had my fill of dead people for a while. Once they're gone, they should stay that way . . . What'd Isobel want?"

"To make things right."

Stopping to look at me, he asked, "How?" and my forehead furrowed in confusion. Why was he so angry? Did Mason say something to wind him up, or had he been thinking about how he'd gotten his ass kicked by my Mom all day and angry about that?

"Well for starters, she taught me how to make waffles." He didn't immediately say anything or move. He was still pretty tense, but a little less so than he had been. "And, uh . . . then she had me play my piano . . . she said I could sing if I wanted." His posture relaxed a little more, but he was still silent, so I said, "And then she coached me in cheerleading, and we went to Dad's pyre and talked."

"About?"

I think that's when it clicked. He'd thought my Mom had moved on - that she couldn't have as much of a hold over me as she used to have - and he'd kind of moved in on her territory by becoming my family. She came back, and in seconds managed to take it all back, so he thought all the hard work he'd put in with me was gone in an instant. He may have relinquished it just as quickly as she took it, because he thought it's what was best for me, but now he was feeling possessive . . . guess that was another thing he had in common with her. "Why? Do you think she's going to push me into another sacrifice or try to talk me out of staying here or - "

"Well did she?"

"No . . . She thinks I might like college if I give it a try - like if I take Occult Studies, then it'd help with the hunting - I can go to college like everyone else to further my career." 

He seemed torn, and then growled in frustration as he looked away from me and muttered, "She's good. I'll give her that." 

Because I now understood where he was coming from, or at least I was pretty sure I did, I smiled softly before saying, "Why, because you think should've thought of it?"

Glancing in my direction, ready to throw me a glare, he relaxed when he saw me. "What else did she say?"

"She said there's nothing that says if I'm a hunter, I can't stay in one place. I can watch the state for signs of a problem and go on business trips further away from home if I see something that requires my attention."

"Which means you can still stay here and be a hunter." 

"Yep."

Mulling it over, he decided it wasn't a horrible idea and nodded before saying, "What else? I know she screwed me over somehow."

I wasn't ready to get into the other things we'd talked about yet. They made me feel way too raw. "She didn't." 

Turning to walk away from me with a shake of his head, Damon said, "So, the woman who hated me when she was alive and helped try to have me killed just gave me her blessing, did she?"

I guess that was also part of the problem. He must've thought she'd try to talk me out of being with him, and because of her influence over me that I'd listen. "Yeah . . . actually." Looking like it was one of those rare moments when he was without words, he stopped to look back at me, and I felt the need to say, "She did say you were dangerous, cocky, and careless, but she also said she could forgive that."

Coming back to me, he asked, "Why?" but all I could do is shake my head and look away from him as I felt a lump form in my throat. It came too close to the things I didn't want to say. I hadn't had time to process them or incorporate them into a way of thinking that I could cope with yet. I wasn't bad. I knew I wasn't bad, but maybe I wasn't bad, because my Mom sacrificed her life to become vampire, so I wouldn't be. Blinking back the water that threatened to escape my eyes, I cleared my throat and was going to change the subject, but Damon said, "It's because I'm so awesome, isn't it? I mean, who wouldn't give me their blessing? I am a catch." I exhaled a teary laugh before looking up at him, and he studied me for a few moments to see if I would be okay before grabbing my hand and saying, "We can talk about it later. Right now, I want you to tell me what Mason found."

"What is it?"

"If I knew that, I wouldn't need you to tell me."

"You mean, he gave you no hint of what it might be?"

"Old Lockwood family secret . . . blah, blah, blah, all I heard is that it'll lead me to something that'll kill an Original."

"Like the Gilbert family secret?"

"You mean the dagger?"

"Yeah."

"I'm thinking it'll work a little better than that."

I immediately remembered something else my Mom had said. What were the odds that she'd tell me not to kill Klaus at the same time that Mason was showing Damon a way to do just that? She'd also seemed to know that Bonnie's grandmother would be with Bonnie. How aware of one another were these spirits on the other side? Anna'd made it seem like she was all alone, but she had eventually been able to move on with her Mother after Imelda helped push them together . . . either she really hadn't seen anyone else, or it was like I'd said and she hadn't known any of the dead people around her . . . maybe it was a little more than that. Maybe they were aware of one another, but couldn't actually talk to one another, so they saw one another and knew which living people the others were following, but couldn't actually interact with one another - except the Original Witch had managed to interact with Vicki, but then she had been dead for 1000 years, AND she was a powerful witch, so maybe she'd figured out a way to do it - it really did sound awful for everyone else though. 

Glancing around us, I hoped my mother had been able to find peace, so she wouldn't have to go back there. And who did I listen to on this one? That was a no-brainer. I had no choice but to listen to my Mom. She may not like Damon, but I knew she cared about me, and she didn't want me to truly be alone. Mason had despised Damon in life and probably still did if he'd been as angry as he sounded about Damon ruining his plans to buy us time to save Tyler, so while he may want to do Tyler a favor by showing Damon a way to kill Klaus, he didn't have the desire to do the same for Damon. 

I looked up at Damon as he let go of my hand to slide through a tighter part of the tunnel. He wasn't going to like it if I told him my Mom said we can't kill Klaus. I should say something . . . or not. He wasn't going to listen, simply because my Mom had said it. If anything, it'd make him want to do it more. I could see what it was that Mason had wanted to show him. If it was nothing, then no harm, no foul. If it was something, then I could hide it while I found answers on what exactly my Mom had meant. Why would killing Klaus take Damon from me? Was it the same kind of thing that made a vampire using a dagger on an original die, or was it something else?

Getting lost in my thoughts and trying to decide what the right thing to do was, I lost track of Damon and came to a fork in the tunnel. Right or left? Did it matter, or did they go to the same place? I picked one and started heading down it, but a hand grabbed a hold of the back of my jacket and yanked me back. I glared at Damon over my shoulder, and his eyes flicked in the direction I'd been going as he said, "Not that way," and then tilted his head in the direction of the other corridor, like that's the way I should go. 

"Abandon hope all ye who enter here?"

Fighting a small smile, he answered, "Had to learn that the hard way, but yeah. I don't know what else is down there." Pausing, he added, "You know I wouldn't have to worry about it if you were a vampire." 

We'd never really delved too seriously into me turning, but I'd made it pretty clear what my stance was even if I hadn't specifically said it. Continuing the grand tradition of talking about it without actually talking about it, I said, "It might improve my sense of direction, but that'd be offset by - "

"I'm serious."

"I know."

"We've got to talk about it some time."

"Why tempt fate?"

"Eve - " He waited a beat before gently asking, "What'd your Mom say?"

It was a little unexpected this time. If he wanted to talk about something, he usually would eventually, but he never really pushed it before I was ready. "A lot of things."

"About me."

Forcing the air into my lungs, I slowly exhaled it and then murmured, "That you keep me human."

The corner of Damon's mouth turned up into a half-hearted smile. "It's not hard. You are human." 

He took credit when it wasn't due and never when it was. I guess that's what happened when you were convinced you weren't really worth genuine praise of any kind. I turned my face away from him and said, "She said it's important to you, and that's why she can forgive the rest." Glancing up at him with saddened eyes, I added, "She turned because of me. It wasn't just for the information she could get on Klaus in vampire circles or to get me to choose becoming a vampire after the sacrifice by becoming one herself to show me it wasn't all bad . . . She was desperate to do it because of what I was becoming . . . She said every time I came back from a hunt, I came back different, and if she could protect me, then she thought I wouldn't have to hunt anymore . . . obviously that backfired, because if anything, Dad took me out more after she turned, and she didn't care as much about putting a stop to it, because he took his anger at her out on me and pushed me away, so she thought his attitude would keep me from moving in with him."

Slipping his arms around my waist to pull me closer to his chest, he touched his forehead to my temple and said, "She turned because she chose to turn. That's not on you." My vision became blurry as I nodded in disagreement, but he shook his head and said, "With as well hidden as she was, she could've taken you away without letting him know where she'd gone and put a stop to the hunting that way, but she didn't."

"She thought about it, but she said I needed my father."

"Well, then she made her choice . . . him or her . . . she just regretted it after she turned, and that is why she didn't want him to have you. It's not your fault."

Turning to wrap my arms around him, I choked out, "She did it because I was going bad, and if she hadn't turned, I would be . . . wouldn't I?"

"Evie, you could never be bad. Brave to the point of stupidity maybe . . . Willing to go as far as you need to go to do what needs to be done to protect people or right a wrong . . . but you also hold yourself to account."

"You mean wallow?" 

He exhaled a laugh. "Yeah . . . You don't do that because your Mom turned. That's all you." His perspective quieted me right down, but I wasn't ready to agree just yet. Nestling his face against the top of my head, he added, "And I know you haven't done that in a while, but that's because you're the one calling the shots now, so you're not doing what your parents want you to do anymore."

But even if I didn't have to do things I didn't want to do the way I'd felt I had to do with Dad, it didn't mean that I wasn't still a killer at heart. "I killed that werewolf pack on my own. I didn't feel bad about it. I still don't."

"I know . . . and I, personally, don't think there's anything wrong with that."

"Then why did that make you start feeling like I have to have normality in my life?"

"Because I'll never forget the way you looked when I found you. I was expecting this fierce woman I only caught a tiny glimpse of in the farmhouse, not . . . I don't know how to explain it. You looked 10 years younger . . . innocent, but you were covered from head to toe in blood. If I hadn't known any better, I would've thought you were a victim of the same thing that killed them and had only made it out, because you hid . . . but I did know better. I knew that if I'd gotten there 10 minutes earlier, I would've seen that woman I was expecting, and I bet she was amazing, but the person standing in front of me was the girl she never really got to be . . . and that girl deserved more than she ever got . . . You can slaughter a pack of werewolves if you want. I don't care as long as you don't regret it, but that's not all you are . . . You're not just a killer. Underneath all that blood was a very human girl, and I decided that if nobody else is going to give you everything you need in life, I will, and what you need is to be normal from time to time and to know that you're more than what you were raised to be."

Yeah, I refused with every fiber of my being to let Klaus or killing Klaus take him from me. I'd do whatever it took to keep that from happening.


	33. Black and White Way of Thinking

Apparently, what Mason had found really was just a road map to the weapon, because after searching that entire section of the cave for anything that even remotely looked liked a weapon, all I saw were a bunch of cave drawings. Don't get me wrong. They were pretty cool, and I felt a little special to be the first living human down here to see them in who knew how long. In fact, when Damon asked me what I found, all I could say was that it was priceless, but unless one of the boulders in here was a magic Original-killing boulder, then all that was down here was information that lead to the weapon, and I had no idea how to read that information. 

I took a few pictures of the wall with my phone, so I could work on it after we left, and then I'd had a little debate with myself on whether I'd show them to Damon or not. I doubted he knew what they said any better than I did, because he was from the 1800s, not prehistoric times, so I figured what harm? It'd help me be able to swoop in at the last moment and stop whatever he was planning if I went along with this for now, and that's pretty much the only way I was going to be able to stop him if he was as determined to kill Klaus as he seemed to be. Besides, I needed to get more information on what my Mom had meant anyway. Why rock the boat when it wasn't strictly necessary yet? 

I made it through my second week of school relatively unscathed, not because cheerleading allowed me some kind of special status the way Caroline had tried to say it would when she first started trying to convince me to join, but because it allowed me to hang out with the only person in that school I really felt was a friend. That's all I'd needed, and between that and my chat with my Mom, I felt miles better about the whole school situation, which is really all that mattered. I'd made it through the week I'd set myself, so I'd stick with it for now.

That weekend, I went over to Elena's, because I was sure Elena wouldn't be there. She was on a road trip with Bonnie, so Bonnie could talk to her Mom. I guess Imelda's role in the ghosts wandering the town had left Bonnie feeling like she needed to do more to get her powers back if it meant getting rid of Imelda sooner, and I figured that Imelda might need some watching or company or company that watched her without making it look like it.

"And where do you think you're going?" 

I looked from the cards in my hand to the front door behind me and saw Jeremy. He immediately threw Imelda a dirty look and said, "Out." He went to open the door, but seemed to be having some trouble with it. Looking at me, he whined, "Eve, tell her to stop."

I tried not to smile as my attention went back to Imelda, and she shrugged a shoulder as she laid a couple of her cards down on the table. "What? These kids have entirely too much freedom. In and out at all hours. Leaving for days on end. Someone has to keep them in line."

Leaning closer, so Jeremy couldn't hear, I whispered, "And that person has to be you?"

Her eye immediately flicked to me. "Who else is there?"

"Fair point . . . but you can't just come in and try to replace the people they've lost, or they're going to resent you being here, and you are a guest in their house."

"They'll get over it."

"Imelda." There was a gentle rebuke in my tone, and she rolled her eye before flicking her wrist in the direction of the front door before her voice rose as she said, "It's not a school night, so be back by 12. If you're not, then you won't be getting back in here, and don't even think of trying to sneak in your window. This place will be sealed up tight until I decide you've learned your lesson."

Throwing the door open, Jeremy threw a look from her to me and grumbled, "Talk to her," before he slammed the door on his way out.

Turning back to Imelda, I shrugged a shoulder and said, "I did just talk to you, right?"

"Yep."

"And nothing's changed?"

"Nope."

Laying my cards on the table in front of me, I said, "Well, then I guess my job here is done. Just don't go overboard and treat them like prisoners in their own home. If you want to help, you can find a way to do it without taking their freedom."

She saw me grabbing my jacket and asked me where I was going. It sounded less parental than the way she'd asked Jeremy and more, like 'don't leave yet.' 

"I have a chicken cacciatore to learn how to make, and apparently it takes a while."

"Cacciatore . . . Italian for hunter. Cute." 

Well, I hadn't actually known that, but now that I did, I wondered if that's why Damon had decided on it, and it made me exhale a laugh before a thought struck me, and my eyes narrowed. "How good are you at languages, Imelda? I mean I know with my alone time, I spent a lot of time learning how to play the piano, so are languages one of your outlets?"

"I've learned my fair share."

Biting the inside of my cheek as I debated on whether I should ask her, I finally decided that I'd brought it up, so I might as well. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I skipped the pictures with the drawings I'd found in that cave and found one of the etchings. Turning it around to show her, I asked, "Do you know what this says?"

Reaching out to pull my phone closer, she studied it before shaking her head. "I said I know languages, not dead ones . . . where'd you find this?"

Moving around the table to sit next to her, I answered, "I've been looking into the history of this town and came across it."

"I don't know what it says, but I don't get a good feeling from it." Getting up to grab a notepad and pen from the fridge, she came back and started scribbling on it. It didn't take long for me to realize she was copying the writing down, so she could keep it, and she confirmed it by saying, "Do you mind if I look into this a little more?"

"Are you going to cheat to find the answers?"

There should be no price if no magic was involved. Her shoulders dropped as she looked up at me. "Not everything I do involves magic. I have a laptop, you know."

Yeah, one she probably got as payment from another hunter. There's no way she went to the nearest electronics store to buy it, and how do you buy a computer to have delivered at your house without a computer? "Well if it gives you something to do, I'm all for it. I doubt it'll take you long to get through those books I brought." She absentmindedly shook her head, while she finished off her drawing and then put the pen down. "That reminds me." Getting to her feet, she moved into the living room and pointed towards the TV before asking, "Do you have any idea how to make that work? I've always wanted to try it." 

I smiled when I saw that she was actually pointing at the video game console under the TV. "No, but I've always wanted to try it too. People who play them in movies always seem to be having fun." She nodded, like that's what she thought too as she crouched down to study it further, and I added, "I'll help you figure out how to turn it on, and the next time I come over, maybe you could show me how to play?"

"And when will that be?" 

She hadn't looked at me, but there was a definite tone to her voice. "Whenever it is . . . You know, I don't remember you being needy, Imelda."

Finally glancing at me, as she stood, she said, "You misunderstand. You shouldn't just come over when your sister isn't here. Whatever wrongs have been done, be the bigger person and give her a chance."

Hm. That might be what she was saying, but this was about something else. What? I didn't know, but I'd find out with a little poking and prodding. Crossing my arms over my chest, I said, "Winning you over, is she?"

"No." Imelda shook her head before saying, "I'm not taking sides. I just know that she is absolutely clueless about the way this world works, and with the power she possesses, she needs to get up to speed fast."

"She won't listen to me."

"She listens more than you think." Pausing Imelda said, "And if you two can work things out, then it means you can stay here instead of wherever it is you go when you leave." 

Ding, ding, ding, and now we were getting to the real reason. "And if I'm here, it means you can keep an eye on me too, right?"

"I get a bad feeling when you both walk out that door, but it's worse with you . . . what have you been doing with your spare time, Eve?"

So bad feeling equated to vampires. That told me at least a little about the etchings in that cave. And like I was going to tell her that I was living with vampires. Sighing, I answered, "Well for one, I'm hunting something big."

"What?"

"Ever heard of Mikael? He's a - "

Her eyes widened as she said, "The vampire-vampire hunter . . . Tell me he hasn't been raised?"

"Uh, well . . . "

"Eve, if he has, you can't go anywhere near him."

"Why? Because with what he is, he can do my job a whole lot better than I can, so the numbers of vampires can go down a whole lot faster with him alive?"

"Not at all. That he's a hunter doesn't change that he's a vampire, but he's - " Stepping closer, she whispered, like she didn't want to be heard by prying ears as she said, "He's worse than you're typical vampire. Eve, he feeds on the dead."

 _Oh Katherine, what have you done?_ "The dead? You mean other vampires."

She nodded before quickly saying, "He doesn't right the balance. He's an even greater abomination."

"Then why can't I kill him?"

"Because he's as old as vampires themselves and leaves a path of destruction in his wake everywhere he goes . . . and you are just a girl."

"So? You were 'just a girl' when you wiped out an entire vampire nest on your own . . . Actually, I think you were younger than I am now."

"Correction, I was a witch, not a human girl, and they were vile, but they were your run of the mill vampires, nothing like Mikael. He can't be killed."

Mm. I'd heard that when it came to the Originals, and yet I was beginning to think otherwise. "Anything can be killed as long as you find the right weapon."

"If there is one, then I'm sure it's been destroyed."

"I guess we'll see."

Imelda's shoulders dropped as she sighed. "I just made you want to look for him harder, didn't I?"

"Pretty much."

She shook her head in disappointment at herself before saying, "And I don't think that's why I get the feeling I do when you leave. It's not a new one I associate with you."

"Is there a question in there, Imelda?"

"I've heard your mother is finally dead, so it's not her. Tell me you're not living with a vampire again, Eve."

 _Actually 3, and one of them is an Original. Probably shouldn't say that._ "Speaking of my mother, I assume I have you to thank for her visit the other day."

Sitting on the couch in a huff, she said, "This whole thing is turning into one big disaster . . . First, let me say, that I truly respect Bennet witches, but they have a knack for finding loopholes I wouldn't even come close to touching because those loopholes stomp all over that line we shouldn't cross and make it muddled, and sometimes that means they lose sight of that line all together. That teenage Bennet wouldn't be the first to outright break the rules, but man did she really screw things up. When she brought Jeremy back, she poked a hole in the divide between the living and the dead."

She glanced at me as I came to sit on the arm of the couch. "She did that, or Vicki did that with the access she had to the Original Witch?"

"Both. That troubled vamp would have never gotten a foothold on this side of the divide if she wasn't first connected to Jeremy . . . And Esther used that to her advantage." 

_Esther? So now we suddenly know her on a first name basis, do we?_ I knew she'd been lying when she said she hadn't known what the Original Witch's name was in life. "So Vicki made the tear in the divide worse?"

"Putting her back did . . . again something I'm sure Esther planned on happening."

 _Starting to feel a little used, are we, Imelda?_ "Hence the jailbreak from the Other Side that happened a few days ago?"

Waving the idea of that off, Imelda looked away from me and said, "Actually that happened before . . . They were walking around and causing problems without anyone being able to see them until I made them visible. I had to do something, so people could at least try to protect themselves while I figured out how to send them all back."

"Mm . . . and in doing so created an even bigger problem. She made it out and knew a way to stay out even though the rest got sent back, didn't she?"

Throwing her hands up in frustration, while she sat back against the couch, Imelda whined, "She was supposed to tell me what to do and let me handle it, not come do it herself."

"What'd she want you to do?"

Crossing her arms over her chest in a pout, Imelda spat, "I can't tell you. You live with at least one vampire . . . maybe one of the ones I saw you with the first day I got here." Sighing, Imelda added, "What is the world coming to when the Forbes ignore their child turning, like nothing's happened?"

There was an imperceptible hitch in my breathing. I'd suspected that she knew what Caroline and Damon were, but she'd obviously found out Caroline's identity. Living here with Elena and Jeremy certainly seemed to working to her advantage in the information department. "Maybe some of us can see past what some of them are to who they are."

"Yeah, I know your mother threw a wrench in things with you . . . It's a lot harder for a child to kill a parent than a parent to kill a child."

"Says the woman who's never had children."

"Not nice, Eve. I was at least attempting to sympathize with why you never killed her the way you should have . . . It's certainly something your Father should have rectified though."

"And I am going to sympathize with you by saying that having children is something you must want, because you seem to be getting awfully maternal living in this house."

"Still not nice."

"Well, you brought my Mom into it, so I'm not going to be very nice . . . and to answer your question, I live in a room that I leased, and the house also happens to have vampires living in a few of the rooms down the hall."

"Why aren't they dead?"

"Well, at least one of them is an Original, so - "

Her eyes widened as she sat forward on the couch and interrupted me. "Oh my God, Eve, what are you doing?!"

"Me?! What are you doing, Imelda? You essentially brought this Esther back from the dead after 1000 years, and you're going to criticize me? I think we've both altered our standards on what is acceptable just a smidge."

Growling in frustration, she plopped back against the couch again before muttering, "I didn't bring her back. She brought herself back."

"With your help . . . and now you can't find her to make her go back, can you?"

She gnawed on her bottom lip, while she debated with herself over something and then finally sighed before reaching into one of the giant pockets on her giant shirt and pulling something out. "I had to destroy her talisman to make them go back where they belong . . . and yet here it is." Her eyes flicked to me, as I both pondered how many things she actually kept in her pockets and looked at the necklace. 

"There's not a scratch on it."

"That's because it's tied to her, and wherever she is, she is whole . . . A witch's talisman still has power once a witch is gone, but if she is dead, and it is destroyed, then it remains destroyed. I don't know if she's possessing someone or who it might be, because I've tried to locate her, and I can't find her anywhere, but wherever she is, she is tied to this plane as surely as you or I." 

"Oh." I went from staring at the necklace dangling between her fingers to Imelda and said, "That's comforting . . . the witch who created vampires now walks amongst us once again." My mind flashed to what I knew about Klaus. It flicked to a memory I thought might be important. Maybe she was tied to this plane now, but she was also tied to being dead, and that's why Imelda couldn't find her. No way was I going to say that to Imelda though.

"You have to believe I didn't know this would happen."

Yeah, Imelda wouldn't have done this intentionally. It may be a loophole of some kind, but it broke every rule in her book. "What I believe is that you wanted something from her bad enough that you didn't look at what her price was before agreeing to it, and she asked for something more than you'd willingly give. She beat you at your own game . . . That tells me a lot about her. It tells me she's unscrupulous, manipulative, and will expect your help when the time comes, whether you want to give it or not, because she's already got you to cross your proverbial line in the sand to get this far, so you'll have to continue crossing lines if you want it to mean anything . . . I told you not to trust her, Imelda. I hope it was worth it."

She quietly admitted, "It might be if she delivers," and I rolled my eyes.

"Well then welcome into the gray way of living, Imelda."

"You mean, like you? You're not going to kill the vampires you live with, are you?"

"Nope. I'm just not blinded by hate. I understand why you are, but if I were going to hate anything, it'd be witches, and you're still alive, aren't you? I kill werewolves. I kill vampires. I know how to kill hybrids - "

Sitting forward in excitement, she asked, "Ooh, how do you do that?"

I smiled. "Sorry, trade secret. If you want to know, put the leg work in and find out yourself." To make her stop pouting, I said, "But something interesting about them is that if they bite a vampire, then it has the same effect that a werewolf biting a vampire has."

"So, they could entirely replace vampires some day?"

"Maybe, but I'm thinking not . . . Their numbers are limited by the number of werewolves there are, because they have to start as werewolves, so - "

"They'll replace werewolves."

"Yeah, that's what I think."

Nodding, while she took that in, she finally said, "I've never seen a werewolf, but I've never been particularly one way or the other on them. Someone in their shared lineage had to have crossed a very powerful witch, and they wouldn't trigger the curse if they didn't kill someone, so they really only have themselves to blame . . . on the other hand, at least they get old and die, and they have their uses. They are essentially vampire-killing machines." Her eyes flicked up to me before she said, "But they have no control. At least vampires have that, or they could if they cared enough to have it . . . and they are just as likely to unleash absolute carnage on innocent people as they are a vampire . . . are these hybrids like that?"

"Well, you've heard of - "

" _The_ Hybrid? Obviously."

"Well, it would appear that his hybrids may be sire-bonded to him."

Her forehead crinkled in confusion. "Why? Do they love him before the turn?"

"No, and that's the thing that makes this a strictly hybrid situation. It would appear that it happens, because the hybrids are so grateful that they are no longer slaves to the moon."

"They don't have to turn anymore unless it's something they want, and who would want that?"

"Exactly."

She mulled it over be saying, "And they already come with a built-in leader. Less stress should mean less aggression."

"Bravado goes through the roof, but aggression seems to be in check."

"So this hybrid in town?" Of course she knew there was a hybrid in town, and she probably knew it was Tyler Lockwood too. There was nothing I could do about it now other than prepare. I nodded for her to continue, and she said, "Are you going to kill him?"

My shoulders dropped. "No . . . Before I killed his uncle, I promised him that I'd look out for his nephew."

She hummed in understanding. "An oath on a deathbed can be a powerful thing."

"Are you going to call in one of your hunters to clear this town out?"

"I need to know more before I do anything, and - " She sighed before saying, "Eve, you'd be seen as a sympathizer."

"I know."

"And hunters are human. Your ring won't protect you from them."

"Nope."

"You've already considered all of this."

"Yep . . . I actually think you've called someone, and that is why you want me to move in here with you." 

She ducked her head before looking at me again, and that was as good of an answer as I needed before she said, "You're really planning to kill Mikael?"

"That is the plan . . . and I think Esther has just moved up into the next place on my list . . . You and your little hunter friend can try to stop me if you want."

"If you can kill Mikael, you can kill the others." Giving her head a little shake, she added, "I don't want to keep crossing lines I'm uncomfortable crossing . . . What if you and I worked together? I may not get everything I want, but I could live with what I get, and I'd be able to live with myself."

"Well, what'd you have in mind?"

I didn't trust her to call off this hunter or hunters, and I didn't trust her not to do whatever it is the Original Witch wanted when the time came. She was too tempted by whatever it was not to go through a few mind changes between now and then, and that's if she hadn't already made up her mind to do it and was just pretending that she hadn't, but as long as I knew that and kept it in mind when I dealt with her, it might be beneficial to hear what she had to say. I didn't have to take her at face value, but I also wasn't going to let her send me off on any wild goose chases either. It might be difficult to work with her, but there was always a chance it could be worth it.


	34. Decipher

I started pulling handfuls of notebook paper out of my bag and depositing them on Liz's kitchen table. Being over here was as good as anywhere else I could've gone to do this. At least here, I could get some fresh eyes to help me decipher this. Picking up one of the hand-drawn pictures of the photos I'd taken with my phone, Caroline read it and said, "Rebekah? How do you know that's what this says?"

"Well, once you find a couple of characters online that match up with what's in that cave, it gives you a language, and that makes translating go a whole lot faster." When she didn't say anything, I looked at her over my shoulder and said, "I got help," before going back to my drawings as she picked up a couple more scraps of paper.

"Elijah . . . Niklaus . . . Kol . . . Finn . . . Henrik . . . Mikael . . . Esther . . . what is this?"

Exhaling a laugh, I looked at the papers in her hand and pulled out my phone to refresh her memory. Taking it from me, she said, "So, you're telling me that they essentially graffitied their names on this cave wall 1000 years ago?"

"At least one of them did."

She continued looking at the pictures on my phone, while she muttered, "Guess things haven't really changed that much . . . And you're sure that means that Mikael is their father?"

I turned back to the papers in my bag and answered, "Yeah . . . if Esther is the Mom, then I'm guessing Mikael is the father because of how their names are written at the top above the kids' names. Told you bad parents turn people into monsters."

"Not always. Sometimes people are born that way, and sometimes people born with bad parents don't turn into monsters."

"True, but in this case?"

I looked at her over my shoulder, and she said, "Fair point . . . And does this mean there are really this many Originals out there?"

"So it would seem. There were some rumors that said 5. I'm guessing those rumors weren't talking about Mikael if he's essentially been hunting down his family all this time and turned himself into something worse than his children to do it. Esther is dead, or was. We've met Klaus, Rebekah, and Elijah, so that leaves Finn, Henrick, and Kol as unknowns we can research. A name is a good place to start though."

Putting the pages in her hand back down on the table, she moved around me to look at some of the drawings and compared them to the pictures on the phone as she said, "I don't think your drawing skills are much better than the people who originally drew these," and I laughed. 

"No, I suppose not."

She started rearranging the sheets of paper, so they matched up with where they were in the photo of the entire cave wall, and sighed contentedly when they were all in place. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at one picture, and then she leaned over before saying, "Is that a wolf?"

I looked at where she was focused. "That's what I was thinking."

Dragging the sheet of paper next to it on top, she said, "Man + Wolf = werewolf?"

"Yeah, I'd say so . . . keep those sheets together and write it down on the paper, so we can keep track."

She did, and then we spent the rest of the night piecing them together until Liz got home. We were still a long way off by the time we were done, because there were some symbols that just didn't make any sense, and others we hadn't even gotten to yet, but we were both getting tired, so maybe they'd make more sense tomorrow or the next day. Before I left, she asked if I could send her the pictures on the cave, so she could keep working on it, so I did even though I was almost sure that she'd tell Elena what we'd found so far. Apparently, Elena had joined the kill Klaus team. If my sister wanted to get her hands dirty for once, then more power to her, but we'd see how long that lasted.

I just didn't think Elena had it in her to kill someone permanently. She'd help right up until it mattered, and then she'd let Damon or Stefan be the one to do it. Maybe she'd even falter along the way. I guess we'd find out. Either way, everyone was working on piecing this together the same way I was. They just had no idea that I had no intention of killing Klaus and was doing it so I could head them off. I didn't need to be 10 steps ahead as long as I was ahead of them, which was why I was having Caroline help me, while also keeping things back from her, like some of the symbols I figured out when she wasn't looking. 

A couple days later, I was at practice and in the middle of doing a handstand when Rebekah walked up and pushed me over, while saying, "What is your sister playing at?"

Landing on my feet, almost gracefully, I stood and looked at her. "I have a better idea of what Mitzy over there is going to wear to some dance this weekend than what Elena is doing. We're not exactly close."

Looking at the girl I'd pointed out, Rebekah snorted. "I think her name is Monica, but close . . . You really don't give a damn about any of this, do you?"

"Nope . . . It's the only way I could hang out with Caroline at school without getting in trouble with Bonnie."

Looking at her nails, she asked, "Why do you let them walk all over you?"

"I don't. I just pick and choose my battles, and that particular battle would have hurt Caroline, so I let it go." 

"You do realize you're still friends with her, right?"

"Not technically."

Rolling her eyes as she moved to my side to stretch, Rebekah said, "Elena had a picture of something I haven't seen in a very long time."

Following Rebekah's lead on the stretching, I muttered, "Did she now?" 

"She did. She said she wanted to talk about it, or she was going to wake up Mikael."

"She actually threatened you?"

"As good as . . . that was her meaning."

Don't bluff with vampires. Just don't. Taking a deep breath, as I switched legs, I said, "You do know that Mikael is already awake, right? I mean, that's why your brother left."

She immediately stopped what she was doing and turned to face me. "What are you talking about?"

"Uh . . . Mikael's awake . . . has been since at least the night your brother left. He has yet to make an appearance, but he is definitely out there in the world again."

"Why has nobody said anything to me?"

Standing up to look at her, I said, "Well, I think the general thinking was that he was after your brother, not you . . . and I guess nobody knew he was your father either. Now that that's out, it makes you relevant to the story."

"How do you - " Cutting herself off with a shake of her head, she turned to walk the other way saying, "I can't believe I thought for one second that . . . you know what? It doesn't matter. Go tell her that I won't say a word to either of you about it."

"Tell her yourself . . . I don't know what she's doing. She has her plans, and I have mine."

Coming back to step toe-to-toe with me, she asked, "And what are your plans?"

"Well, I want to kill Mikael. She basically wants to use him to kill your brother."

"Oh." She relaxed before taking half a step back. "Why would you do that?"

"I have my reasons . . . one being that I feel like if he's had you all running scared for this long, then if I take him out, it'll look good on my resume . . . Is that a problem? I mean he is your father, so - "

"He stopped being that a long time ago, if he ever was . . . but you don't stand a chance against him."

"I might."

"Are you willing to risk your life on 'might'?"

"What else have I got to risk it on? Nothing I do is certain."

She breathed out a laugh before shaking her head and then said, "I still haven't seen her."

Her eyes flicked in my direction, like she wanted to make sure I understood her abrupt change of topic, and I did. She must've been looking for signs every day that her Mom was somewhere nearby, most likely as a ghost, and hoping for a chance to see her. I felt a little bad about that. "Well, she's out there somewhere too . . . Her talisman is what they were looking for the night they were over at the house."

"Her necklace?" 

I nodded. "It had to be destroyed to send the other spirits packing, but after it was destroyed, it just magically came back, like nothing had happened to it."

"So, she's really out there?"

"Yeah. Where? I have no idea, but she is definitely grounded in a body this side of being dead. I guess she'll show up when she's ready . . . I kind of feel like she and your Dad are just waiting for their individual moments." No way in hell was I telling her that I also had her mother in my sights. Something told me that one wouldn't fly as well as what I'd said about her Dad.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the spot where Elena had been, and then she said, "I have to respond. I can't just let her threaten me like that with something she knows has already happened."

"Well, you could feed her false information and tell me the truth." 

I gave her a quick grin to accentuate that I was joking, and she snorted before saying, "Nice try . . . I need to know how you know what you know before I decide what I'm going to do."

"Was the picture she had of writing in a cave?" 

Rebekah nodded. "It was my name."

"Well, next to your names were a bunch of cave drawings all telling a story. There are symbols for werewolves and the moon and vampires . . . It's in a part of the cave where no vampires can go. It's blocked off, like when you guys can't get into a house you haven't been invited into yet. I don't know why, but it's like the werewolves or someone close to them, kept tabs on you guys, wrote down your story, and they wanted to keep vampires out, because it's their secret on what to do about vampires . . . the answer is in the beginning."

Sighing, while she grabbed a towel, Rebekah said, "Well, I'm sure you've already got a pretty good idea of what would work on killing us, but we destroyed it . . . hence the ash."

I'd suspected that based on how badly she'd reacted to the white oak ash in my blood. Plus, there were all those cave drawings of a white tree. I just hadn't been sure, and I'd wanted to be. "Yeah . . . I'm guessing it was a specific white oak tree, not just any one out there."

"That would be correct."

Why was she telling me this? Maybe she really didn't think I'd be able to do anything with it. "But I suspect that even though it was destroyed, some part of it had to have made it's way into Mikael's hands, or you guy's wouldn't have had to run from him."

Tossing the towel over her shoulder as she walked away, she answered, "Yep . . . Good luck getting it from him. It's never far, but he never keeps it on him unless he's close to getting what he wants."

I watched her go, and when she was far enough away that we knew she couldn't hear, Caroline came up to me and asked, "Why did you tell her that Mikael is already out?"

"Because - "

She looked at me, while she answered her own question. "You might be manipulating her too, but the truth works just as well to get what you want."

"Yep. Now I'm sure of what the weapon is and who has it. That's only half a step away from having it myself with the added bonus that I didn't make her feel like I think she's an idiot by lying to her." 

"What do you think she's going to do to Elena for trying to lie to her?"

"Nothing except maybe make her wait a day or two to tell her what she told me in 5 minutes."

"Are you sure?"

"As sure as I can be. She's not going to kill the girl that her brother needs to make his hybrids, because she wouldn't do that to her brother, but she is going to want to put Elena in her place, and stringing her along will just about do that, because she knows she has what Elena wants, so Elena's time and attention is all hers for as long as she decides she wants it."

"Why would she tell either of you what can kill her family?"

"That I don't know . . . except she obviously doesn't think we'll be able to do anything with it."

"I still hate her, but maybe she's lonely and just wants to talk."

"Maybe." I picked up my own towel and said, "Or maybe she has a big mouth, like you, and needs her brother around to keep her from saying things she shouldn't all the time."

"I don't have a big mouth."

"Uh huh, and Elena just happens to know Viking well enough to know Rebekah's name when she sees it."

"Oh come on, you can't seriously be upset with me."

Walking towards the parking lot, I answered, "Nope." 

I really had been expecting it, not that Caroline believed that I wasn't upset. Following me, she quickly said, "I mean we're all on the same team, and she's one of my oldest friends. She was really struggling with it . . . And she said she wouldn't be able to go to the Homecoming dance if she didn't have it figured out by this weekend." I breathed out a laugh, and Caroline asked, "What?"

"Nothing. She is full of surprises. I'll give her that much."

"What do you mean by that?"

"What I mean is that as one of your oldest friends, she knows how to play you, and she did to get you to give her exactly what she wanted."

"She wouldn't do that."

She didn't sound so sure of that. "Uh, well she did, or do you think with the way she has Stefan locked up in Ripper Rehab that she really ever wanted to go to a dance he can't attend?"

A growl of frustration left Caroline's lips, before she said, "Am I really that easy to trick?"

"Any one is. It's not just you."

"I didn't tell her everything."

That surprised me. "No?" I glanced at Caroline over my shoulder, and she shook her head.

"I didn't tell her what any of the pictures meant . . . Something is wrong . . . You're working with me on things you should be working on with Damon. You are up to something, and I don't know if it's bad, but I want to believe it's not, so I didn't tell her . . . but I do need you to tell me what's going on."

I argued with myself over it for a couple of seconds, and finally decided she needed to know at least part of it. "Imelda called a hunter."

"She did what?!"

"Yeah . . . I told you guys how she was."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"But you don't kill people."

"Hunters aren't people. They're just monsters that haven't turned."

"How can you say that? You are a hunter." 

I looked at her again. "No, I'm a sympathizer."

"What?"

"In their eyes, I'm no different than you. I'm worse in some respects, so - "

"Anyone she called will come after you." I nodded, and she looked a little shell shocked. "But you didn't do anything. You - "

"Let you live . . . I live with vampires . . . There's really no other way to describe it."

"That's why you've been coming over to my house every night until Mom comes home. Does Imelda know - "

"She pegged what you were the first time we saw her, and whether it was intentional or not, either Elena or Jeremy have let slip who you are. There is a part of her that wants to take care of them, but that doesn't mean she's not also keeping a close eye on them and listening for anything that could be useful."

"That's why you don't want Elena to know everything . . . You think she'll let Imelda know."

Shrugging a shoulder, I answered, "Just the important parts . . . Imelda's also the one who helped me figure out those names were in Viking. She may be a pain in the ass, but she has her uses. I just don't want her to know everything."

"And Mom? Will this hunter see her as - "

"Yes . . . She knows what vampires are, and she's been tasked with protecting this town from them. She wouldn't be considered a civilian. She's fair game if she's using what she knows to protect you."

"Oh my god, Eve! Why haven't you told anyone?"

"Because I don't know if the hunter or hunters are here yet. I don't get the feeling they are, but when they do arrive, they will probably wait to see what happens with Mikael before they make their move."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I told Imelda I was going after him."

"But shouldn't this hunter want to help him if - "

"Mikael is a vampire. It doesn't matter if he's a hunter too."

"Eve, you have to tell the others. They need to know."

"What they need to do is stay out of my way, and them being preoccupied with studying these pictures is the best way to keep them out of it."

"And what are you going to do about Imelda? I'm guessing if this hunter dies, she'll just call another one . . . and maybe she has called more than one. You can't let her keep living with Elena and Jeremy."

"Their house is now a safe house. She won't let anything happen to them as long as she's there."

"You mean she's holding them hostage."

"Using them as collateral . . . and I think she genuinely likes them, so that helps."

Stopping at her car, she asked, "What should I tell my Mom?"

"Whatever you think she needs to know . . . and keep an eye on Tyler. Imelda has a keen interest in the hybrids."


	35. Conditional Okay

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

My eyes fluttered open just enough to see who it was before they closed, and I rolled over grumbling, "Get out of my room."

"No." One second I was warm and comfortable. The next, I was on high alert as my blankets started to be violently torn away from me. Gripping onto them tightly to keep the warmth from leaving my body, I sat up yelling, "Stop it, you little cretin."

Elena stopped tugging, and her eyes narrowed as she said, "Or what?"

"Or I'll kick your ass and make you think twice about coming in here again . . . What are you even doing here anyway? Damon just had that door fixed, and - " I stopped when she held up a spare set of keys for the lock. "Did he give you - "

"He doesn't know I have them yet, and I am waiting for one good reason why I shouldn't tell him what you - "

"He always keeps those on him, so things like this don't happen." My eyes narrowed slightly. What had she done to get them? He'd promised that he wouldn't lead her on anymore, and that included putting a fast end to anything she may try to start. He may have to do it without letting her know why he wasn't interested, because he'd agreed not to let anyone know about us until Klaus wasn't a problem anymore, but it was doable, and I had to start trusting him sometime. "Did you take those while he was in the shower?" Her eyes widened in shock, and I smirked. "You saucy little minx . . . that's exactly what you did. You know, his bathroom doesn't have a door. Did you get a good look while - "

"Oh my god! Shut up."

"That's a no, but you were tempted, right?"

"Will you stop it?! You're not going to distract me from this . . . Caroline told me - "

With a soft growl, I muttered, "Of course she did," as I flopped back on my bed and pulled my covers over my head to add, "Go away!"

"I'll tell Damon if you don't talk to me."

"Go ahead. It'll make breaking the news to him that much easier if you're the one who does it . . . and then you can be the one to stop him from just going over there to try and kill her. He'll be dead before he crosses the threshold."

Growling in frustration herself now, Elena said, "I know you told Caroline that it isn't safe for any of us to leave town. If we do, it'll just make it easier for whoever this person is to pick us off, so where were you yesterday?"

"I needed to get some things."

Pulling my blankets off my head, she looked down at me and demanded, "What things?"

I'd gone to my Dad's storage locker and then went to one of Mom's. "None of your business . . . oh that reminds me." I reached into the drawer by my nightstand and pulled out a little pouch before tossing it in her direction. "Tell Jeremy to keep that on him at all times. It should do what the tie pin Elijah gave me does."

Turning it over in her hand, she examined it, while saying, "That's who gave that pin to you?"

"Yep . . . When the plan was for me to replace Katherine, so I could get closer to Klaus and then swap myself out with you, he said it was the only thing that'd keep Klaus's witches from knowing I wasn't you."

Still studying the hex bag she said, "He was actually going to help you?"

"Well, he didn't think of it as helping. He thought of it as keeping me out of the way. He didn't think I'd be able to make the final switch being that close to Klaus."

Lifting the bag in my direction, she said, "Where'd you get this?"

"I made it."

Her eyebrows rose. "Then why didn't you just use this instead of using the pin Elijah gave you?"

"Because I just made it last night. I didn't even know if I could without the ability to perform magic . . . turns out I can. Witches might be nature's servants, but nature gives us ways to protect ourselves from them."

Taking a deep breath, she looked at the bag again and asked, "Is there any way you could make more of these?"

"I already have." I tossed her another one and said, "You can give that one to Matt."

"I didn't think you liked him."

"I don't."

"Then why would you give this to him?"

Well that should be obvious, shouldn't it? "Uh, because he's a target."

Sitting on the edge of my bed, she asked, "How so?" and I tried to think about how to explain it.

"Well, for starters, he's important to Caroline and Tyler. Let's say they aren't easy to get for whatever reason. Then all a hunter has to do is take Matt, and either one of them will come running. When they do, they'll land in whatever trap's been set for them."

"Is that what you would do?"

I shook my head. "No. I watch my targets, learn as much as I can about them, and then use myself as bait using what I know about their likes and dislikes . . . sometimes all I have to use is an open blood bag, and that does the trick."

She nodded before looking back down at the bags in her hand. "These only work if you're human, don't they?"

"Yeah, that's not up to me. It's nature's call on that one . . . I know my pin will work for everyone else, because it worked for Elijah. Think I'll keep it for now and see who needs it most." 

"And this will hide Jeremy from Imelda?"

Sitting up against my headboard, I nodded to the bag and said, "It'll do a little more than that. It'll keep her from being able to use magic to harm him."

"I thought witches couldn't use their magic to harm humans."

"Sure they can . . . They can use it to kill one another, and they can use it to kill monsters. They can most definitely use it to harm humans . . . It's just killing humans that's a problem, and even that, they can do if they use their bare hands . . . or a knife or gun . . . you get the picture. That won't protect him from a physical, non-magical attack, so he still has to be careful . . . and Imelda isn't necessarily the only one with magic . . . hunters use a lot of weapons that witches have charmed in one way or another. It should work for those kinds of things too, since those weapons were essentially made with the use of magic."

Her fingers traced the bag as she studied it, but her forehead furrowed in discomfort as she asked, "And Bonnie? You think she killed John with the spell to bring me back? If she did, then - "

"A loophole." She looked at me, and I explained what I'd meant. "The spell didn't technically kill him even though she knew what would happen to you when she did it. If you hadn't died, he wouldn't have either."

She swallowed before looking down again in shame. "Do you blame me for that?"

"If you didn't know about it, then no . . . and yet yes, because if you hadn't cared about becoming a vampire, then I don't think he or Damon would have done what they did that day to keep you from turning."

Tearing up a little as she looked at me, she said, "I never asked them to do any of those things for me."

"I know. That's why I've tried really hard not to blame you for it. I blame Dad and Bonnie, and I blame Klaus for putting all of you in that position . . . I don't blame Damon, but I probably should. I can't help who I blame though . . . Until she apologizes for her part in it and shows true remorse, I'll probably never like Bonnie, and even then, it'll be a struggle. Klaus - he's an outside party to what happened. He didn't even know about it, so I shouldn't really blame him, and I do less now than I did, which is probably progress in the mental health department. Dad . . . I blame him them most, but he's dead, and my grief over losing him probably overrides it most of the time."

"You've thought about this a lot." Of course I had. I shrugged, and she looked down again as she changed the subject. "What else did you get while you were gone?"

"Nothing you need to worry about right now. All you need to know is that I'm on it."

Sticking the bags in her jacket pocket, Elena said, "I want her gone."

"Finally starting to understand why I said I might have to kill her?"

Giving me a disgusted look, she was quick to say, "No. I just don't want her in my house anymore."

"You can't just kick her out. You made a deal. You may have done it without looking at the fine print, but you still did it, and you never cross a witch . . . There may be a way around it though."

"What?"

"You could sign your house solely over to Jeremy, and then it would no longer be your right to say she can stay there, so he could kick her out . . . but then you have to ask yourself if that's what's best, because her being there is what is keeping you and Jeremy safe from whoever this hunter might be."

"Do you really think she wants to keep us safe, or is she planning to use one of us as bait?"

Taking a deep breath, I considered it before saying, "She's not bad . . . She's just trying to do what she thinks is the right thing even if that means people get hurt. She could use one of you as bait, but she really seems to like the two of you . . . I'm about 55-45 that she'll behave even if she thinks she has no other choice. 75-25 on any other given day."

"And those odds sound acceptable to you?"

"Well, I live in a place where it's about 50/50 that I'll be murdered by my housemates on any given day and 80-20 if one of them is in a bad mood, so I'd say the odds are more in your favor."

She exhaled a laugh before ducking her head and giving it a small shake. "You missed a lot, while you were gone."

Yeah, I'd left early and hadn't gotten back until late. "Damon filled me in on how he and Stefan had a run in with Mikael."

She nodded before saying, "Did he tell you that I got Rebekah on our side?"

No, but he had said that she had some news and that if I wanted to know it, I should ask her myself. He was never going to give up on trying to get me some kind of family, but he never seemed to realize he was my family, and I think he'd become that before my parents were even dead. Glancing at Elena, I asked, "How'd you do that?"

Lifting the keys to my bedroom door, she flicked a glance in my direction before bowing her head again. My eyes immediately went to my school bag, and I flung my blankets off as I crawled to the foot of the bed and went to my desk. Unzipping it, I took the papers out and only had to go through a couple before I felt the need to roll my eyes and mutter, "I would've known someone went through these. They're all out of order."

"How do you know what order they belong in?"

Shuffling the papers to make them right, I answered, "Uh, I know how to read a story. It doesn't start three quarters of the way through and jump to the front, then back, and finally the middle."

Walking up beside me to look at what I was doing, she asked, "But how do you know what any of this means?"

"Caroline helped on some of it. Imelda helped on the names. Then it was just a matter of piecing things together into a cohesive story."

"You're not mad I went through your things?"

"Honestly? I feel a little violated. I'm not sure how I feel about that." 

I glanced at her over my shoulder, and she looked away before nodding towards the papers and asking, "What do the pictures say?"

"Short version?" She nodded, and I looked at the papers again. "This family lived in peace with it's werewolf neighbors until one of them was killed . . . I don't know if it was Kol, Henrick, or Finn, but one of them was killed by the werewolves. The mother was a witch, and she drew power from the sun and this tree . . . the white oak tree . . . to make the family immortal and as monstrous as their neighbors . . . The tree that gave them a long life could also end it, so they burnt it down . . . and the world was left with a family of monsters so beastly that one of them, the hybrid . . . killed his own mother, and that was the end of peace, not only with their neighbors, but of peace as it once was all across the land."

I looked at Elena again, and she exhaled a breath she'd been holding. "That's pretty much what Rebekah said happened. You really got all that from those cave drawings?" I shrugged a shoulder, and she shook her head before she said, "Except she didn't know that Klaus killed their Mom."

"So you just filled her in on that little detail?"

Elena nodded, and I said, "It won't matter . . . She might be more of a free spirit than Elijah, but the same thing that told me he wouldn't really kill Klaus, is telling me she won't either."

"I don't know." Looking away from me with a somewhat guilty face, Elena muttered, "It destroyed her to find out that he's been lying to her all this time."

"But he's her brother. She might be hurt and angry . . . and she is definitely the spiteful type, but we are still talking about the same girl who forgives him every time he stabs her in the heart and sticks her in a coffin for decades at a time. I mean, do you have any idea what that must be like . . . to go to sleep against your will in the roaring 20s and wake up today? She's missed so much. Women had only just been allowed to vote in this country when she went down. She missed the Great Depression and World War 2. She missed out on flower power in the 60s and the music and the scientific achievements and inventions that have happened since then . . . and we weren't alive to see most of those things either, but she was. She just missed them, so there's this huge gap in her own personal story that she'll never be able to get back, and it's not the first time he's done that to her, but she forgives him every time . . . She'll forgive him for this too." 

"Why does he do it?"

"Because he's afraid she'll leave him."

"Rebekah said he can't stand the thought of those around him disappointing him."

"Yeah, by leaving him . . . to him there'd be no greater disappointment. I think he's been hurt deeply by the people he cares about the most, and that's because he cares so much. A lot of what you see is an act he uses to protect himself."

"You make them sound so human."

"Well, all vampires, even Originals, start as humans. When they turn, they become enhanced . . . In some ways for the better and others for the worse."

"And yet you kill them."

My eyes flicked to her, and I said, "I know there might be some good, however small, in any vampire I kill, but - " I cut myself off with a sigh before saying, "Stefan has a good side, right?" She nodded, and I said, "And you've caught a glimpse of his bad side, but his bad side is bad, Elena. I guess that you could say that every day I was with them, it was a struggle for me not to kill him. When I go after vampires, the side of Stefan that I felt like I should kill is the side of them I'm hunting. There are so many other options for them. They could go the tame-Stefan route and eat bunnies. They could go with blood bags. They could bite, heal, and erase . . . Honestly, I'd let them go if they only stuck to bad people."

"Who decides if they're bad people though?"

"Come on, Elena. If someone is bad, you know it . . . Do you think Ted Bundy was good, or was he a human monster? There are plenty of human predators of all kinds for them to feed on out there, and if they did, they'd be doing the rest of us a favor."

"You mean like Isobel? Caroline told me you said that's what she did." 

I nodded, and she thought about it, while I said, "Anyway, if they survive by doing any of those things, then they don't get on my radar."

"Can you show me what to do?"

My eyebrows flattened in confusion, as I said, "You mean - "

"Can you train me . . . the way you train Caroline?"

"I, uh . . . "

"I need to know how to protect myself. I need to feel like I have some control over my life, because I haven't in I don't know how long."

"I understand that, but we've kind of got a lot going on right now, and - "

"Even more reason for me to know how to protect myself and everyone around me. You can't be everywhere at once."

"Yeah, but it's taken me years to get where I am." She started to walk off in a huff, and I said, "You can't expect to be good at it overnight. It takes time and commitment, and maybe it's a little like playing the piano." She stopped to look at me, and I said, "I started when I was young. It helped mold my brain and natural reactions into what they are now . . . that only happens when you start young . . . I'm not saying you can't learn to protect yourself. I'm just saying, leave it at that . . . Don't go into this thinking you can run around doing what I do or protecting other people. That's a good way to get you and everyone around you hurt."

Crossing her arms over her chest, she said, "That's not a no."

I shook my head. "It's not a no . . . more like a conditional okay . . . but if I see you pick up any kind of weapon and go looking for trouble, that's it. I'm pulling the plug."


	36. Monsters and Aliens

Feeling every bit like this shouldn't be happening as I watched the interloper in my living room, I hung back in the corner, partially hidden by shadows. This was my hunter-setting at one step above attack mode. Watching without looking like I was, waiting, learning about my foe, and reading body language, listening for tone, and hearing what was really being said under the words that were actually being spoken, so I could be there to stop something before it started. Everyone in the room was aware I was there, because they'd seen me walk in here when I got back from checking the secret perimeter I'd set up around the house, but I made myself as inconspicuous as possible to dampen the knowledge that I was there . . . maybe until they forgot about me. 

It only took a few minutes for me to latch onto the idea that this was the monster from my childhood, and that is why it felt bizarre to be standing here in a place I considered a home, while I watched him drink some of Damon's best bourbon. He was cold. Just the air around him was menacing. He appeared to be clinical . . . precise. You could see it in the way he moved, spoke, and even breathed. Any attacks he made would be the same. He was calculating, and he accounted for almost everything, but he also wasn't one to think outside the box, which meant he could be surprised - not that it'd be easy. There's a reason his son had been able to stay ahead of him for 1000 years, but there was also a reason his son had been on the run from him for 1000 years. 

It all made sense . . . the sad looks when I'd described how I'd imagined Klaus to be before we met, the concern with measuring up to what I'd expected . . . I'd had no way of knowing then that I'd been describing his father. Mikael was a jaded old soul without an ounce of humanity . . . maybe. The way he spoke about killing his son was pretty cold, and his determination to do so was unsettling. It had nothing to do with making the world a better place and everything to do with him just not liking his son . . . or the bastard son he hadn't known wasn't his, but if he'd liked his son before he found out, then it wouldn't have mattered if Klaus was his or not. 

Finding out that Klaus wasn't his just gave him an excuse to do what he'd always wanted to do . . . either that's because his instincts had told him that Klaus wasn't his, and he'd ignored them until he couldn't, or there were personality clashes. Whatever it was, it may not be overly apparent given his calm demeanor, but there was pure, unadulterated hate there, and hate was a human emotion. Family connections always seemed to bring out the human side of monsters, even when you were sure there was no humanity there at all. I'd keep that in mind. Best not to pin him down into any one box, because when you did that, people had a tendency to surprise you, and that was a good way to wind up dead. Always expect the unexpected.

Him being here was surprise enough. It's not that I hadn't expected him to show up. I'd been expecting it since I'd heard of him. Katherine woke him, and Mystic Falls was the last place she'd known Klaus to be, so of course he was going to come to here. I wasn't all that surprised that he'd introduced himself the way he had either. Damon was right. The quickest way to make your point was to wrap your hand around another guy's heart and start to squeeze. It was a pretty effect way to say, 'Hello,' and also, 'Don't fuck with me. I'm the dominant one here, and you are of no use to me whatsoever if you cannot provide my son's head on a stick.' If that's what he thought of vampires, I think the humans in the room meant less despite his change in feeding habits over the years. 

The vibe I was getting was that his choice of diet was less about seeing real value in human life and more because he thought he was above praying on humans, like he got more power if he was the predator's predator. Vampires were more of a challenge, I suppose, something I'd told Klaus he should look for in his victims, but I hadn't meant he should eat vampires. I don't know. That just seemed . . . cannibalistic? Vampires may have started as humans, but they weren't humans. They'd mutated into something else, so they were no longer the same species. That made vampires eating humans seem - well, I wasn't going to say it was acceptable, but it was in comparison to vampires eating vampires. That felt wrong, like it really did go against the natural order in a way I didn't think merely becoming a vampire did. I could see why Imelda would still be against Mikael even if he was a hunter.

What surprised me was that on this day, I was standing here, while my childhood monster stood half a room away talking to people I knew, like he belonged here. He was real, but unlike the monster of my childhood, he wasn't after me. I also had a way to kill him, something I'd never thought was possible when I was growing up. He could be stopped, and he had to be, because whether everyone in the room knew it or not, he was going to turn on them.

He'd use Elena as bait. He'd kill her if necessary. If Stefan or Damon made even the slightest mistake, he'd kill them. Once he was done, he'd probably kill them anyway, because his use for them would be over, and what was a guy who'd spent the last 1000 years with one goal in mind supposed to do when he finally got what he wanted? He wouldn't just smile to himself and say, 'Well, that's a job well done. Think I'll go to the pub for a pint,' and then head off into the sunset to enjoy his retirement. 

That hate and drive to kill had to be turned on someone. It wouldn't just go away now that his target was dead. He didn't seem to have any interest in killing his other children, so who did that leave? Every other vampire on the face of the planet? They wouldn't be the competition that Klaus had been for him. What happened when other vampires were all that was left? He wouldn't get any satisfaction out of killing them. Maybe then he would find reasons to turn on his other children, but what happened when they were gone? 

Humans weren't even on his register of things to eat, so it wouldn't be us he'd kill, and that drive to kill wouldn't be turned inwards, because he was too full of himself to ever end his own life. He wasn't lonely, because he'd had his need to kill Klaus to keep him warm at night for over 1000 years. Would he grieve it, like some kind of widower once that need had been met? I didn't know what he thought he was going to do when the chase was over. Maybe he thought the children he'd alienated in his pursuit of Klaus would be reunited with him, but they wouldn't want that, because if killing Klaus was part of his DNA now, then running from Mikael was in theirs.

Maybe there was a part of him that was aware of all of this, and if that part of him existed, no matter how small, then I suspected that he would find a way to let Klaus slip through his fingers once again. I mean, the guy'd had 1000 years to catch him, and he hadn't done it yet. He needed Klaus alive. Sure, he'd turn around and blame us, which meant he'd kill us, but it'd really be his fault. He'd draw it out, and lose focus sometime near when his son was about to die . . . take his eye off the ball for the briefest of moments . . . and that would be my moment to strike. 

I watched as Mikael handed a dagger over to Elena, and she seemed a little taken aback by it. "You want me to actually dagger you?"

He answered her kindly, almost in a fatherly, reassuring manner, but all I could see was the poised snake ready to strike underneath the disguise. "Klaus will leave nothing to chance . . . Especially when it comes to trust."

That was true, and I needed Klaus here as much as they did, but it wasn't to kill him. I needed him here as bait for his father even though his father was standing right in front of me. To get the white oak stake and his father to be in the right place at the right time, Klaus had to be a part of it. Stepping out of the shadows, I spoke for the first time. "Then I'll do it." Maybe I'd done a better job than I'd thought of making them forget I was here. That's what the look on their faces told me anyway. "He'll never believe Elena did it if I'm here."

Mikael looked at Elena to see if that was true, and she shrugged a shoulder before looking back at Stefan and Damon. Damon started to answer, but Stefan's the one who got it out there first. "She's right . . . It should be her. He thinks Eve is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and Elena's just a sheep. He'd expect Eve to be able to pull it off."

Standing taller, Mikael thoughtfully asked, "Would he now?" 

His eyes were shifting from Stefan to me as he opened his mouth to respond, and I took the dagger from Elena's hand and thrust it into his chest with little to no style. Just a quick, almost comical, movement to get the job done. As he fell to his knees, Elena shoved my shoulder in frustration. "Why'd you do that?" 

"What, you want to fight over stabbing Originals now?"

"No! You could've given him fair warning. He is helping us with - "

"You're kidding right? I guarantee the next words out of his mouth would have been, 'If Klaus believes you are duplicitous, then perhaps it would be best if he believes you are dead, or he will know something is suspect and may not make an appearance.'" She tried not to smile at my imitation of Mikael, and my eyebrows rose expectantly, like I was hoping she'd fill in the next part for me, but she didn't, so I did it, and it came out sounding confused, because I didn't know how she couldn't see it. "And that means he would've killed me, since Stefan can't lie to Klaus?"

Her smile fell as she looked over at the boys, and they shared a look before exhaling an identical sigh. Stefan shrugged, like 'probably,' and as the most paranoid one out of all of us, Damon nodded, "Yeah . . . yeah, that's definitely where that was going." Throwing a look at the body, he added, "We aren't waking him back up until we're sure Klaus is on his way here," before he looked at me and said, "And you, Little Miss Stabby, are staying clear until we know Klaus is here."

Yeah, I should be relatively safe as long as Mikael saw that me being alive didn't complicate things with Klaus returning, and Klaus hearing that I was the one who stabbed him wouldn't do that. I really believed that Klaus would expect me to do just that, because he understood that I would see his father as an adversary as much as I saw him as one. I also think Klaus was tired of running, and with the newfound confidence he must have with any hybrids he'd created while he'd been gone, I suspected he'd come back just to finally finish this. Chasing might be all his father had, but running was not all Klaus had. I'm guessing it'd ruined a good chunk of that 1000 years he'd lived. He was definitely ready for it to be over.

I lifted a shoulder in agreement with Damon's plan, and he felt comfortable enough with my response to tell Stefan to get Mikael's feet, so they could move him somewhere else less conspicuous. That's when Elena's attention came back to me, and she felt the need to say, "But you don't know that's what he was going to do for sure."

Stabbing him in the heart had been part of the plan, so she didn't think what I'd done was completely wrong, but she definitely believed I'd done something rude that bordered on wrong, and I had no idea how to respond to that. I'm pretty sure the look I was giving her said I thought she had green skin and was warbling her words in some unintelligible alien language, because she frowned as she stepped back, like she didn't like being examined under my microscope. Blinking a couple of times, while I tried to think of how to put it in the simplest terms possible, I eventually landed on, "I don't need to know it for sure. If I waited long enough to be sure, I'd be dead." Turning it from me onto her, I argued, "And you need to get something straight. He is not helping us with Klaus. He doesn't even really think we're worthy of helping him. To him, all we are is a means to an end . . . that's it."

Getting defensive, she spouted out, "I don't trust him or anything."

"Then what's the problem?"

"That was way too easy for you to do."

Oh. She knew I could teach her how to protect herself, but I guess hearing something about someone isn't the same as seeing them do it, and despite all my talk about it - and all the talk that she'd heard from the others, she'd only really ever seen me dart Stefan and Damon in the basement before I knocked her out and took off with Klaus. That's not quite the same level of violence as stabbing someone in the heart. "Well, he did leave himself wide open, so - "

"That's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant . . . but let's pretend I didn't and won't."

"Why? Why can't we - "

"Well, why must everything be talked about ad nauseam? I'm violent. I kill. You know that. You just didn't really start to believe it until now, because seeing is believing." 

It's essentially what her problem was with Stefan now. She'd known all along what he was, and maybe he'd held some things back on how he'd been in the past, but she'd known about it to a certain extent. It just wasn't something she believed until she saw it with her own two eyes the night Klaus came here, and now she didn't know what to do about it. I guess this was another eye-opener for her, but I hadn't really thought much of it, because in terms of acts I'd committed over the years, it registered as next to nothing in my books.

My eyebrow lifted as I waited for her to respond, and finally, she sighed before saying, "Okay." Both of my eyebrows shot up in unison, and she exhaled a laugh. "Don't look so surprised . . . You're right. I do know, but I didn't really _know_ until now. It doesn't mean I'm just going to stand here and say nothing when I see you doing things I don't think you should do though." 

Whatever. She could say whatever she wanted, but it didn't mean I had to listen. Judging by the look she gave me when I rolled my eyes, she was probably thinking something similar, except the opposite, like I may not listen, but she could say whatever she wanted. That meant we were kind of on the same page, or we would be if that page was ripped in half and on two different planets.


	37. Building From the Ground Up

After doing my morning check of the perimeter and finding nothing to indicate it had been breeched, I waited for Elena to come over for her first lesson. I don't know why this couldn't wait until after this Mikael situation was over, but apparently, she didn't want to wait, and she'd just go to Caroline for training if we didn't start the second she wanted to start. She was really demanding, and it wore on my nerves, but I couldn't let her train with Caroline. Caroline was only learning herself, but it wasn't just that. The way I trained Caroline was entirely different, because she was a vampire. There were things she could do that Elena couldn't. She couldn't turn around and then teach Elena those things. 

When Elena's car pulled up in the drive, I walked around to the front of the house and was waiting for her when she got out. She seemed a little unsure of herself, but I tilted my head in the direction of the back of the house, like that's where we were going, so she'd at least know to expect we'd be outside, and then I turned to head back where I wanted to go without waiting for her. If I was her instructor, then I was her instructor. If I had a pleasant chat with her until we got where we were going, then it'd blur the line between being me being an instructor and me being a peer. That wasn't a problem with Caroline. We could hang out, while we trained, but with Elena, there was a constant power struggle between the two of us, so if this was going to work, then she needed to know right off the bat, that I was not her peer when it came to hunting.

Coming to the spot I'd selected, I waited for Elena and waved my hand in the direction of the blanket I'd laid out on the lawn, while saying, "Have a seat."

When she didn't immediately do what I'd said, I looked back at her over my shoulder and waited. She could do what I said or not, but I wasn't saying anything else until she did what I'd said. Rolling her eyes with a sigh, she finally sat on the blanket, and I started. "You already know that vampires are stronger than you and faster than you. Those are advantages that are difficult to overcome, but not impossible as long as you have a weapon, and the single greatest weapon you have is your mind . . . If it's not strong, then none of your other weapons will matter. You need to know how to act without thinking, but before you even get that far, you need to know how to think."

"I'm not an idiot."

I stopped the slow and steady pacing I'd started to look down at her. "I never said you were, but you have vastly underdeveloped instincts. They should have told you when you met Stefan that he wasn't human, and if they did, you didn't listen, so it took you weeks to piece it together." 

My eyebrow ticked up, like I knew I was right, and she sighed. "I didn't think monsters existed. How was I supposed to know he wasn't human?"

Crouching down to look at her, I said, "Elena, we're human, but that's just the type of animal we are, and all animals have instincts that tell them when they are in danger. The ones who don't are the ones who die. Think of a fox in the wild . . . if it's never seen a human before in it's life, it still knows to run the first time it sees one. It may be curious and stay in the area, but it doesn't come walking up to the human, like a dog would. Now if that fox sees the same human day in and day out, it's instinct to run will lessen, because it'll think the human is safe to be around, and maybe that human is, but what happens if a hunter then walks up to it? It's instincts have been trained to think that humans aren't dangerous, so the hunter has a free shot at the fox, and it dies."

She took that in, and her forehead crinkled as she said, "So, you're saying that I did know Stefan wasn't human before I found out, and now that I've gotten used to him, my instincts against other vampires is weaker?"

"Yeah . . . pretty much."

"But I didn't know he wasn't - "

"You did . . . something in you told you there wasn't something right about him, but you ignored it because of the pretty face or because your mind said, 'He's just the new kid. I'm probably imagining it.'"

She bit her bottom lip in thought before saying, "The day we met . . . it wasn't in the halls at school or in class, but I went to the cemetery, and there was this fog and a crow - "

I rolled my eyes. "Damon playing tricks."

"Damon?"

I exhaled a laugh. "The fog and the crow were him. Vampires sometimes have gifts. Stefan's too concentrated on either controlling his blood lust or giving into it to know if he has one, but those are Damon's. He uses them when he hunts. He hasn't hunted in a while, so he hasn't had a reason to use them lately unless he's trying to show off." 

One time, he did that fog thing to me, while I was watching _Halloween_. I only noticed it when I had to swat it away from the screen, so I could see. He was reading a book at my desk, said he didn't see anything, and by then it'd disappeared, so I'd thought maybe I'd imagined it. The fog came back when I started watching again and disappeared when I checked my window to see if it was open. It came back when I started watching the movie a third time, and it wasn't until he laughed when I touched the screen of my laptop to see if it was coming from there that I realized it was him. It was actually pretty funny. I would so consider turning just so I could get a cool super power, like weather manipulation, but with my luck, I'd wind up with nothing at all. 

Sounding annoyed, Elena said, "Yeah, well I got a bad feeling about both the fog and the crow, so I ran, and then I ran right into Stefan, but I wasn't glad to see him. I felt like he was part of the problem. It took a minute or so of talking to him to feel like I'd been overreacting."

Yeah, well the difference between when she saw the fog and when I did was that Damon may have been considering hunting her at the time. "See . . . those instincts are there. They're just underdeveloped. You need to learn how to trust them." She nodded, and I stood before saying, "And what goes hand-in-hand with instincts are your senses. They come together to create a sort of alarm system to alert you to the presence of danger before your mind is even aware it's there. So, I want you to close your eyes." She seemed unsure, but my eyebrows rose in expectation, and she eventually complied. 

"What am I supposed to be doing?"

"Listening." Taking three steps to the right, I said, "We'll start easy. Keep your eyes closed and point to where I am."

She did, and I said, "Good . . . but that's with me talking. I'm going to stop talking, and I want you to point to wherever I am whenever I stop moving." She nodded, and I moved again. When I stopped, she pointed at where I was, and we did it a couple more times until she started looking bored when she flicking her hand in my direction. I smirked. Now for the not so easy. When you're a vampire hunter, you have to know how to be almost silent when you move. It's not something vampires have to learn, because their prey can't hear as well as they can or move as fast, so sneaking up on their prey isn't as hard for them to do as it is for a hunter to sneak up on a vampire. 

I moved with all the stealth I possessed and watched her tilt her head, while she tried to hear where I was now. Her head turned from side to side in confusion, and I finally said, "I'm right here," from about 6 feet behind her. She jumped before looking back at me over her shoulder. 

"How'd you - "

"You may not hear me move, but you should still know where I am . . . listen for cues in the area . . . like there are 3 birds in the trees about 50 meters behind me. They've been tweeting away the entire time. I'm somewhat blocking the sound of one of them, so the change in volume of one should give you an approximate location . . . or the wind . . . listening to changes in that or noticing a difference in how it feels to let you know it's being blocked in a certain direction are a good way to know where someone or something might be if it's close. A better one than either of those is being able to feel when someone is looking at you. The only downside to that one is that it weakens over time with certain people when you get used to them."

Giving me a disbelieving look, she said, "And you can really do all that?"

"Sometimes I get caught off guard, but it doesn't happen very often, and I don't have to think about what I'm telling you to do . . . All those things have become part of my instincts, so it's a little hard to explain, because I'm trying to deconstruct them, so you can learn." Walking up to her, I offered her a hand to help her up, while I said, "Try me."

I took her seat, and she looked down at me unsurely. "I have no idea how you got from there to there without making a sound."

"So move further back until you don't think I'll be able to hear you move." 

She took it under advisement before giving me a nod, and I closed my eyes. I let myself relax and cleared my mind. I didn't listen for anything specific, because I didn't need to do that. I could just feel where she was even after she was a good 30 feet away. There's something about being watched that let you know where someone was . . . like I was fairly certain that even though my perimeter hadn't been breeched the previous night, we'd been watched at least part of the night from outside it. That's why I'd been so late in coming in when Mikael was here. Whoever it was, wasn't there now. It was pretty early, since Elena and I had school. That told me it was probably one hunter. If there were two, then there wouldn't be a gap in times when we were being watched, because while one hunter slept, the other could keep watch.

When I'd pointed Elena out five times, I opened my eyes and saw her running in a big circle to get to somewhere else, and it made me laugh as I got up. 

She stopped running when she saw me and started walking up to me saying, "I don't think I would've like playing you in hide and go seek."

"Funny, because that's sort of where my training started."

"Really?"

"Yeah . . . It's a great way to hone those instincts from an early age."

Looking like she was considering how that might work she said, "Is this what you do with Caroline?"

"Not quite . . . She's getting to a place where she can defend herself pretty well, but it doesn't matter how many times I shoot her with a vervain dart, she still doesn't expect it half the time."

"You shoot her with vervain darts?"

"Well, that's what's dangerous for her, isn't it? It's one of her weaknesses."

"But maybe she just trusts you, and she doesn't think you're going to shoot her."

"Yeah, and she trusted Tyler's Mom not to shoot her and hand her over to her Dad. She needs to be ready at all times, because it may not always be a stranger that's after her. This town is full of people who are half aware of vampires, and they are trigger happy. All it takes is one little slip on her part and the wrong person will have her where they want her. She'll die." 

"But Stefan's been alive a lot longer than her, and you were still able to catch him by surprise. How do expect her to be any better?"

"Because she can be. Why think in terms of limitations when I know how capable she really is, and who says it isn't what Caroline expects of herself? We have an understanding, Elena. You may think it's harsh, but if I went easy on her, then she'd think I didn't think she was up for it, and it would hit her self-esteem hard. She'd get discouraged . . . It's actually a sign of respect that I don't go easy on her."

"And what about me? Aren't you going easy on me?"

"You're human. The things that are threats for you aren't threats for her and vice versa. And with you I have to start at the foundation and build you up from there."

Taking a deep breath, she nodded before looking back down at the blanket and taking a seat. Looking at my watch, I said, "We'll do this for another 15 minutes, and then we'll move on." I glanced at her to see if there were any arguments and got none as she closed her eyes. She did get better. It still took a while for her to pinpoint me, but that wasn't a problem, because when she did point, she was getting closer. It would take more than a day for this to sink in, so we'd probably do this at the start of every time we trained together until I was sure she didn't have to think about it anymore. There were other instincts she needed to build up, like learning when to run and not to run from a vampire, but we'd get to those later.

After we were done with that, I went to bag and pulled out some wood and a spare Bowie knife before tossing them on the blanket in front of her. Looking up at me in confusion she asked, "What are these?"

"You need stakes."

She looked at her own bag and said, "But I already brought some."

"Did you make them yourself?"

Giving me an annoyed look, she was quick to say, "No."

"Then how do you know you can trust them?" She hesitated, and I said, "If they were in the cabin or the attic, they could look fine, but they're old, so they could be rotten on the inside and will fall apart when you try to use them. Maybe they aren't rotten, but are weathered, so they aren't smooth, and they'll give you a splinter. A splinter means blood, and maybe that'll give your position away, or maybe it'll make an already agitated vampire lose what little control they have over not biting you. What if the stakes you brought were made for bigger hands than yours? Will the grip be suited for you, or will it be too big? If it's too big, you could lose your hold on it when you go to strike. If you want control over your life, then there are no short cuts. There's a certain kind of power that comes from the confidence you gain using a stake you've created . . . You'll know these down to the finest detail, because they'll be entirely yours from start to finish, and you'll know they're reliable when you need them to be, because you made them that way."

Her shoulders dropped as she sighed and looked down. Picking up one of the pieces of wood and the knife, while I sat next to her to do the same, so I could show her how to do it, she glanced at me and said, "Did John teach you that?"

Shrugging as I started shaving away some of the wood, I answered, "The part about making your own stakes being important, so you know you can trust them. The power you gain from doing it is something I came up with myself. All I had one time was one of his, because it was a spur of the moment kind of attack, and it wasn't the same."

Watching what I did and trying to do the same, Elena asked, "Is that why you always have one on you?"

"It's why I have my stakes hidden all over the house, like Easter eggs you have to search to find."

"They attacked his home?"

"Yeah . . . I was staying there during one of Mom's 'I need some space' times. She didn't get them often, but when she did, it was time to go. Anyway, Dad had gone after this nest. It was a small one, like 4 or 5, but 1 got away, and it must've followed him home . . . It also must've thought I'd be an easy target, because it stopped by with another friend when Dad was out shopping."

"But how'd they get in?"

With a small smile, I said, "I let them in . . . Katherine had just taught me something I wanted to try. Dad didn't have any leads on any new hunts, and there they were, like two Christmas presents on my doorstep. I killed the first one with the stake I had on me, but I had to go for one of Dad's in the little time I had before the second one got to me. I knew where his stake was, but it wasn't mine, and it just didn't feel the same . . . I had to stab the vamp three times to kill him."

"How old were you?"

"I'd just turned 15."

Taking a deep breath, she held it for a few moments before saying, "When I was 15, I was more concerned with cheerleading camp." Her eyes narrowed in thought as she concentrated on shaping her stake. "What did Katherine teach you?"

"What to do if I was bitten."

Elena stopped what she was doing and looked at me. "Is that something you can teach me?"

"I can tell you what to do, but I can't really teach it to you."

"What do you do?"

"Jam the stake the stake through their neck. It makes their jaws unhinge."

Her eyes widened. "Is that all?"

Ignoring her sarcasm, I said, "Well, that's what Katherine taught me to do, but if you want to do it right, then you want to make sure they're dead, so I developed this technique where you use the stake as a handle. It gives you complete control of their head, and you can tear out the fleshy part of their neck . . . off pops the head . . . it's easier with a dagger, but it can be done with a stake. It's just messier."

"Oh my god . . . you tear their heads off?"

"Yep." 

I gave her a look, like I didn't know what the problem was, but I wasn't sorry for it, and she rolled her eyes while huffing out a short breath of air. Shaking her head, she said, "And Katherine taught you . . . Does that mean - "

"She let me stab her in the neck? Yeah . . . How else was I supposed to get a feel for what that was like?"

"That doesn't sound like her."

"No, but it is a good way to gain trust, not that she's ever really gotten mine . . . here and there we have our moments, but they're never permanent."

"Just like with Imelda?"

I nodded, while I focused on my stake. "Just like Imelda."

"So you'd kill Katherine too?"

"I did almost kill her . . . another half inch, and she'd be dead right now."

"You mean at the masquerade ball?" I nodded, and Elena said, "You really would have gone through with it?"

"The only thing that stopped me was Caroline. I was already falling on my stake when she got to me."

"But you would've been dead too."

"Yeah?" I gave her a look that said I thought she was strange and then said, "I figured it'd keep Tyler from triggering the curse if her compulsion wore off, and without Katherine interfering, all Damon would have to do was get rid of the moonstone, and things would be fine. I didn't know that Rose and Trevor were going to mess that all up by taking you to Elijah the same night."

"And if you'd died then or in the ritual or when you were letting random vampires into your house for practice, would I have ever known about you?" 

Oh, she was getting angry. "Uh . . . well, I suspect that Dad was maybe planning all along to do for me what he wound up doing for you if I was in the ritual, so maybe?"

"But how many times before that did you almost die?" My eyes squinted, while I thought about it, and she interrupted my concentration by saying, "If you have to think about it, then it's too many times."

"Well, it depends on what you mean by almost died . . . If it's by letting vampires into the house that wanted to kill me, then it's like every time I hunted one, but I don't really consider that almost dying. If it's times I've been hurt . . . again, I don't really think of it like almost dying. If you mean hospital visits . . . there have been a few of those, and - "

"How many?"

Seriously? How was I supposed to know that off the top of my head? "I don't know Elena. A few."

"For stitches?"

I threw her an annoyed look. "The smaller things, Dad could fix. If it was a severe, then he'd take me to the hospital, and it'd require surgery of some kind, or if I had a broken bone, then we'd go to the hospital . . . One time I was in a medically induced coma for a few days, and - "

She quickly snapped, "What happened?" and I wondered why she was mad now.

Thinking back on it, I tried to remember what'd happened that time. "Uh, well . . . I didn't really remember it until after Damon gave me his blood the first time. I guess I must've had the memories for the day or two leading up to that hunt knocked out of me, and his blood fixed that . . . so it's a little like it happened to someone else even though I can remember it now. I was 12. Before I was allowed to get close enough to play bait, I used to act as back up with my crossbow. On this hunt, I was supposed to stay up in my perch until Dad's signal . . . He got attacked without giving it, and I shot anyway. I hit the vampire in the chest, but not the heart, gave away my position, and Dad got hurt, so he couldn't stop it from coming for me. I killed it before it killed me, but it messed me up pretty bad before I could . . . bad enough they didn't question Dad when he brought me in saying I'd been in a car accident, and I was in the hospital for a couple of days under a fake identity . . . I guess I'd consider that almost dying, so . . . once?"

She didn't look like she believed that and backed it up by saying, "I don't believe you."

"Okay?"

"Why did Damon give you his blood? He wouldn't do that if it weren't serious."

"Oh . . . yeah, I guess he almost killed me too. He punctured a lung and didn't think I'd make it to a hospital out of town."

"When was that?!"

 _Why is she yelling?_ "Um, not long after I met him. Mom had just gotten ahold of the Gilbert Device, and he thought I knew more about what she was doing here than I did. I actually had no idea she or Dad were in town until Damon told me after he attacked me."

"And what about the other times?" The confusion must've shown on my face, because she rolled her eyes and said, "You said you got those memories back the first time he gave you his blood. I want to know about the other times."

Oh. She could be quick to pick up on things when she wanted to be. Why'd it feel like I was digging myself further into a hole instead of out of one? "Well, the next night, Katherine staked me, and I guess I almost died then too . . . It's the night she attacked Dad in your house. Damon found me passed out on the floor of my apartment."

"Is that it? Or has he had to give you his blood more than that?"

Sighing, I thought through it and said, "I guess maybe the night I had to dagger Elijah he gave me some, but it wasn't really necessary. I just got stabbed in the shoulder."

Her eyes widened. "By Elijah? Was it after you told him your plan to trade places with Katherine, or - "

"No, I did that after I removed the dagger. The night I used it on him, Damon threw the dagger at him, but I knew it'd kill him if he succeeded, and the fastest way to stop him was to take the dagger for Elijah."

Dropping the half-carved stake and knife into her lap, she buried her face in her hands and took a slow breath before shaking her head and whispering a muffled, "And what about what happened with Mason? Damon told Caroline you got hurt going after him on a full moon."

Waving that off, I said, "Meh, I just got a few scratches. I gave myself stitches, and I was fine."

Looking over at me, she angrily asked, "Then why is he still mad about it?"

"Because he's melodramatic? Maybe he heard the attack over the phone, and maybe it sounded more vicious than it was. He's mad that I did it without him and tricked into going out of town, so he wouldn't be here when I did it . . . I was fine."

"I think your version of fine and a normal person's version of fine are on two totally different planets . . . If you'd died any of those times that weren't the ritual, then you would've lived and died without me ever knowing about you, wouldn't you?"

Sighing, before I pulled out some sand paper, so I could start going over my stake, I answered, "Yeah . . . although in fairness to Mom and Dad, they did want me to meet you when I came here. Katherine convinced them we should get to know one another and that I could live with you . . . but it kind of went against everything I'd been raised to do. I would've had to convince you not to tell anyone about me . . . stay somewhere like your attic, and then convince you to let me substitute myself in for you on things that were too dangerous for you to do. That would've never worked, and what was the point of meeting you if I was going to die anyway? If you didn't know about me, it would have made no difference to you if I was dead or not."

"How can you say that?"

Resting my hands in my lap as I looked at her, I shook my head and said, "One thousand one - two people just died. That's how many people die every second of every day, and are you going to feel bad about all of them? No, because you don't know them. This is no different."

She almost yelled, "It is different," while she angrily took out her frustrations on her stake, and a moment later grumbled, "I would've told you . . . If it'd been me, I would've wanted you to know about me."

"Well that's selfish."

She threw me a glare, and I thought for a moment that maybe making stakes hadn't been a good idea. "You know what's selfish? Not telling me. It wasn't your decision to make on whether or not I got to know about you."

"Actually, as the other half of this twin pairing, it was my decision to make, because I was the one who knew about you, and it wasn't all about you." Throwing her unfinished stake on the blanket, she went to get up, and my tone held a warning in it as I said her name. It made her stop. "You can throw in the towel on this any time you want, but once you do, there are no take backs." She glared at me over her shoulder, but my face remained impassive. I wasn't mad, but I'd meant what I said. Sitting back down on the blanket in a huff she picked up her tools, and I went back to focusing on what I was doing as I said, "I did what I thought was right, not just for you, but for me too."

"You didn't want to meet me?"

I glanced at her over my shoulder. She looked sad. I still said, "No." Looking down at my stake, I continued. "It wasn't all because I resented you."

"Then what was it?"

I didn't know her well enough to go into any of that. Smiling briefly, I answered, "That's a story for another day." Looking down at her stake, I handed her some sand paper and said, "You need to make it more even at the point, so it doesn't come out lopsided, or it'll break. The pressure at the tip needs to be handled evenly on all sides to make it as strong as possible. Once it's right, use this to make it smooth. You can do what you want with the handle after that. It doesn't need a defined one, but you should make sure it feels right in your hand."


	38. Modern Day Athena

"I'm so sorry. I can't leave anything to chance." 

My eyes widened in surprise as I silently slid back and stepped into an abandoned room a little further down the hall. Guess Elena hadn't needed me to keep an eye on her after all. If anyone wanted to know if she had it in her to be cruel, then the answer was yes. Manipulative? Yes. Traitorous? Yes. A thief? Yes. Violent? Apparently, yes, even though she gave me a hard time about it. Why was she 'Saint Elena' again? I really needed to start taking her more seriously and stop letting my guard down around her. I waited until she was gone and then slipped out of my hiding place to head for my room, so I could get what I needed for tonight. 

I'd thought it was strange that Elena had gone to have a girly conversation with Rebekah. Being on the lookout for my hunter had me pulling out all my devices, including my listening equipment, and that meant I was picking up sounds from all over the house, including duplicitous sisters. I'd planned on making myself scarce tonight, so I could have the freedom to do what I wanted, but this sped up my timeline. 

Walking back to Rebekah's room before anyone came in to deal with the body, I pulled the dagger out of her heart and put it in my bag where it belonged with _my_ things. Picking her up under the arms, I dragged her to the window, opened it, and . . . well, it's a good thing she was mostly dead and a vampire, or with how rough I was getting her out, she would've been bruised and in some serious pain when she woke up. She was already going to be cranky after being stabbed, but maybe I could make that up to her. 

When I was done dumping her body out the window, I turned to grab her another dress that she had hanging in there, ran back to the window and made sure nothing else was amiss before tossing the dress, a pair of shoes to match, and my bag out. Climbing out after them, I closed the window behind me and picked up Rebekah's hand, whispering, "Not sorry . . . Think I'll take a chance on you," and then proceeded to drag her into the woods, so I could hide with her somewhere the others wouldn't find. It may have looked crude, like I'd reverted back to being a cave woman, but it also left at least one of my hands free in case my fellow hunter decided to attack. Whoever it was definitely had eyes on me at this particular moment. Maybe seeing me drag a 'dead' vampire out of here would buy me some time.

It was a few hours later, the hunter had gone, probably when the vampires in the house had, and it was dark when Rebekah finally sat up with a gasp. Her eyes immediately found me as she lunged in my direction snarling, "You!"

Still sitting comfortably with my back against a tree, I quickly pointed the gun dangling in my hand up at her and said, "Not Elena." She stopped, unsure of whether I was going to dart her with my blood again, and that was the single best reason to have let her know not to mess with me early on. It meant she took me seriously without me having to do a whole lot to earn that kind of respect. When I saw she wasn't going to attack, I said, "I had no idea she was going to do that." Getting to my feet to grab the dress hanging on a branch around the side of the tree, I tossed it to her saying, "Don't you have a dance to get ready for right now?"

Clutching the dress to her chest, and showing a rare moment of vulnerability, she whispered, "You mean I haven't missed it yet?"

Looking down at my phone, which I'd put on silent, I checked the time and said, "No, but you'll want to go through the finishing touches with as much vampire speed as possible. Your make up is fine, and so is your hair if you pick the leaves out, but I sort of ruined the red dress getting you out of the house. I like the blue dress better anyway. I think it'll bring out your eyes better." Tossing her the shoes I'd put in my bag and one of the mirrors I always kept in there to help me look around corners, I added, "And just so you know, it's been unexpectedly moved to Tyler Lockwood's house at the last minute." 

_Thank you, Caroline, for texting me that little detail._ My eyes flicked up to Rebekah's face as I zipped up my bag and waited to see if she caught my meaning. She did. "Nik." 

I nodded and then picked up my bag to sling it over my shoulder. "That would be my guess. You can go to the dance or not. I would suggest you go. If you want him dead, then don't hide behind Mikael and the others to make it happen. Doing it the way you were planning to do it by pretending it isn't happening, while you dance the night away, is nothing but cowardice. You owe your brother more than that, and you owe it to yourself . . . You'll never forgive yourself if you aren't the last face he sees. Dying is one thing. Dying at the hands of a father that hates you is another. Give him a face that still loves him even if it is ending his life." If she didn't watch it, those tears she was trying to keep back were going to ruin her make up. I walked past her, but stopped a few feet away to say, "In the cave . . . there was one symbol, I couldn't figure out. It was of a triangle with an infinity 8 inside it at the funeral of your mother . . . Do you have any idea what that means?"

I heard her choke out a sob, but she didn't say anything, so I turned to look back at her, and she finally said, "Always and forever." Hm. It'd seemed important. The hybrid symbol was at one of the corners. I wasn't sure who the other two corners of the triangle were meant to represent, but I suspected they were she and Elijah based on the way those symbols had been used in a couple of other places. I guess I was right that she was at least one of them. I turned to leave again, and she stopped me by saying, "He killed my Mother."

"I know. He killed mine too, but I'm still going to do everything I can to save him. Feel free to stop me if you want."

Flashing in front of me, she said, "Mikael is involved now. _You_ can't stop _him_."

"I guess we'll see."

Her face scrunched up slightly as she struggled to keep it together. "If Nik killed your mother, why would you help him?"

"Because she told me to do it . . . When she came back, she said I have to protect him, and she is the one he killed, so if she could let it go, then it's something I have to let go too."

"But I haven't seen my mother."

"No . . . but something tells me you will soon."

"You know something."

There she was, the Queen of Intuition. I'd wondered where she'd gone. "I do. She's tied to this world now, but she may not be entirely free of being on the other side, and I think that's why you haven't seen her yet . . . She's waiting for something to happen before she can come back completely, but I think when she does, you won't want to see her."

Taking a step back, she asked, "Why?" and I answered, "Because I think if she were here right now, she wouldn't be trying to stop Mikael . . . but unlike him, she wouldn't stop at Klaus."

With a quick shake of her head, Rebekah was fast in denying it. "No . . . my mother loved us . . . she did this for us. She would never - "

"Listen to my breathing and the rate of my heart." I wanted her to focus. What I had to say may not be something she wanted to hear, but she needed to hear it, and she needed to believe it. I think maybe the reason Elena had been able to trick her earlier was because her intuition was malfunctioning. It had everything to do with her knowing what was supposed to happen tonight, but she could stop it if she wanted. Looking her in the eye, I said, "Your mother been talking to a witch I know, and that witch's sole purpose in life is to wipe vampires off the face of the planet. Your mother told this witch that after 1000 years of watching her children become what they have, that she finally understands why it is she shouldn't have gone against the natural order, and she wants to fix that mistake. When you see her again . . . run."

If my mother's forgiveness of Klaus for my benefit was what allowed me to feel free to do what I had to do tonight, then maybe Rebekah's Mom turning on her children would have the same effect on Rebekah. I'd meant every word, and there's no way Rebekah didn't know that I was telling the truth as I saw it. Taking a step back and looking a little like I'd staked her, Rebekah got out of my way and let me pass her once again. Whether she'd do what I needed her to do, I didn't know, but I suspected she might, and that is why I'd wanted her involved tonight. I just couldn't rely on her not to go overboard and kill the real person I was trying to save, so as I walked away, I added, "I don't know what you're going to do, but if you feel the need to be there, don't take Damon from me, and we'll be even on me making sure you at least have a chance to do whatever it is you feel is right about your brother." 

It would appear that I got to the party a little late, because it was in full swing when I arrived, not that I minded. I wasn't exactly here to be social, more like hang out in the woods around the house. I mostly intended to keep an eye on what was happening at the party and keep a low profile until the right time. I was sure there was another hunter out here in the woods the way I was. Whoever it was had no idea what they were in for tonight. Should be interesting. 

About 25 minutes later, I got the fourth or fifth text from Damon asking whether I knew where Rebekah was. 

It was way too close to game time for him to still be stressing about that. Finally breaking my radio silence, I texted back, _I took her._

_I knew it. You have an unhealthy obsession with stealing dead Originals. What are you planning?_

I sighed. How was I supposed to respond to that? Maybe I wouldn't. No, I had to say something. _Couldn't just leave her where she was._ I read through it. There was no lie there that I could see. Press send.

_I would've moved her. Why did you take her?_

_I saw an opportunity I couldn't resist._

_This doesn't have anything to do with the hunter, does it?"_

I scowled at my phone. Which one told him? Something told me it wasn't Caroline. She was too wrapped up in planning the stupid dance, and Elena had been around him all day. She was a little, back-stabbing, weasel is what she was. Hunters were the last thing he needed to have on his mind when he was going up against Klaus. His plan, and my plan that was piggy-backing off of his plan without him knowing were dangerous enough as it was and needed his entire focus. To try and put his mind at ease somewhat, I texted back, _Dragging a 'dead vampire' out of the house does make an excellent prop._

I left it at that and slid the phone back into my pocket as I felt someone, or more like some _thing_ , come up behind me. Without looking, I muttered, "It's been too long, and yet not long enough, Kat."

"You're getting better."

I smiled without looking back at her. I hadn't been sure it was her, just a hunch - something about her perfume. When she stepped up next to me, I glanced at her over my shoulder and said, "I was glad to hear Mikael didn't kill you."

"Why, my Dear Niece, were you ever really worried?"

I hadn't called her, but Damon had tried quite a few times, and she hadn't picked up until around the time Mikael made an appearance. Shrugging a shoulder, I turned my attention back on the party and muttered, "I thought about calling once or twice."

She nodded slowly in understanding without making a big deal out of it. That's the most she was going to get out of me, but it said enough. "I thought you weren't supposed to be here tonight."

"When have I ever done what I'm supposed to do?"

Biting the inside of her cheek to hide her smile, she nodded before saying, "You know, there's being a wallflower, and then there's skulking around the outskirts of a party. Why are you out here?"

"Plotting, scheming . . . You know, the usual."

"Anything I would want in on?"

A smile flickered across my face before I nodded. "You play your part the way you're meant to play it, and I'll spin it, so you come out on top to the right people." If I got her off the hook with Klaus, that should make us just about square after she told him I'd already left town the night of the ritual. I'd find another way to make it up to her for telling Damon I was in Chicago.

She was quiet a few moments and then finally turned to look at me. "You're going after Mikael?"

"I am."

"Before he kills Klaus?"

"That is the plan, but I'm thinking both sides may need to get a little bloody for it to work."

"Hence why you still need me to play my part."

I nodded before looking at her, and she said, "Good . . . I was just on my way to go find Stefan. Klaus is onto us. He's put a contingency plan in place. If he dies, then he's instructed his hybrids to kill Damon."

Oh. Well, I don't think that's what my Mom had meant by saying that if Klaus died, I'd lose Damon, because she'd made it seem, like this was going to be an ongoing issue instead of a one off, but it certainly seemed to fit in this particular instance. "I'm already doing this to protect Damon. It doesn't really change anything for me, but it wouldn't hurt to let Stefan know too in case my own contingency plan falls through."

Flashing me a genuine smile, she nodded before looking at the party and saying, "Excellent. That means there's no added pressure to throw you off." Nodding, like she felt comfortable with how things were going, she started to take a step back, but then stopped to add, "Word of advice . . . They all expect you to be here even though you're not supposed to be - even Klaus. Being late is fine, but not showing up when people are expecting you increases the anticipation, so everyone is looking for your arrival instead of seeing you arrive and then forgetting you're there to focus on their own plans. You need to make an appearance if you want a clear shot to victory when the time is right."

I actually kind of missed her giving me advice like that. Sighing, I looked back at the crowd. She was right, but there were an awful lot of people there. "I'm not exactly dressed for it."

Smirking, as she looked at what I was wearing, she responded, "When you're mingling, tell the people you don't know that you're a roadie with the band. Anyone who knows you will expect you turn up dressed just the way you are."

Looking down at my leather jacket, I asked in annoyance, "Like a roadie?"

"Like a modern day Athena." The goddess of wisdom and war? I gave her a more considered look, and she said, "You look the part, Eve, and you have nothing to prove with me. Now go show the rest of them what you've got."

Well, that was nice of her to say, and it was more of a pep talk than I would've ever expected her to give. Biting the inside of my cheek nervously for a moment at the compliment, I finally muttered, "Yeah, well it's not just the audience we know about that I'm concerned with tonight. When this is over, you should still get out of town as fast as possible." That should make us just about square for Chicago too . . . or it should if she didn't get killed by the hunter on her way out.

Pausing for a moment, she eventually leaned closer and cryptically whispered, "I have my rules. You have yours. We may bend them from time to time, but we have them for a reason. Self-preservation above all else . . . You leave that with me." By the time I looked over my shoulder, she was already gone.


	39. Being Tactical

"Eve!" I'd found it more comfortable to be in the house than outside. There were less people in here . . . still enough that I didn't immediately know who'd said my name, but at least I'd been able to hear it. My eyes landed on the stairs, and I saw a panicked Tyler waving me over to him, so I made my way to the bottom step and got there at the same time Matt did. We followed Tyler up, and he opened a door for us before he began pacing. "I don't know what you guys are planning to do tonight, but Klaus knows you're planning something, and you need to stop doing whatever it is. This place is packed with hybrids, and they are sired to him just like I am."

I briefly noted that Caroline was passed out on the floor and looked back up at him. See, this was exactly what I'd been trying to explain to Elena. Caroline trusted Tyler, and what did Tyler do? He shot her up with vervain, or I assume that's what he did. Her neck didn't look bumpy and disjointed, like he'd broken it. As Matt went to check on her to see if she was okay, I muttered, "And did Klaus tell you to knock your girlfriend out?"

Seeming distracted, Tyler looked down at her before shaking his head. "No, I'm trying to protect her. He won't care if she isn't involved."

"You're right . . . He won't." 

Tyler did not need a nudge to ratchet up his anxiety even higher than it already was. Matt was standing next to me by that point, so I saw him start to open his mouth out of the corner of my eye and put my hand up to signal he needed to keep his mouth shut as Tyler's attention came back to me. "So, you understand why I had to do it, right?"

I nodded. "Sure." 

Relaxing, as he looked down at her again, he started to say, "Good. Help me get her out of here, and maybe you can help me explain it to her when - " 

He cut himself off to look at me in shock as he reached up to touch the side of his neck. "Did you just - "

"Shoot you? Yeah." I watched him fall to his knees and said, "You understand, right?" as he fell on his face.

I may have jumped the gun a little, but this was always the plan to keep him out of the way, since he had no control over being on Team Klaus. It wasn't supposed to happen until Damon got here, but why tempt Damon into doing more than was strictly necessary to deal with Tyler on what was already a stressful night. The whole idea of keeping Tyler out of this was to keep us from having to hurt him when he inevitably turned on us. Sighing, as Matt went over to check on Tyler, I reloaded my gun with another dart and slid it under my jacket to tuck it into the small holster at the back of my jeans. Looking down at Tyler and Caroline, I tried to decide what to do with them. 

My attention went to Matt as he finally asked, "Why did you do that?"

"Why do you think? He's already agitated, which makes him unpredictable, and he is literally a slave to Klaus right now. I have no idea what Klaus did or did not tell him to do to any of us. He may not want to do whatever it is, but he has no choice, so neither did I . . . besides, it was a bit of a dick move for him to use vervain on Caroline like that."

"You told him you understood why he did it."

My eyebrows rose. "Oh, I do . . . I mean, I did just do the same thing to him to protect him, because if he comes at one of us, he's going to get hurt or worse. That doesn't mean I can't be annoyed that he did it to Caroline. She trusts him. He used that. Now look at her." 

Shooting me a little look, he grumbled, "Does that mean you're annoyed with yourself?"

"Not in the slightest."

"How can you say that?"

"Every decision we make has a number of considerations that go into making them. Being annoyed that he knocked Caroline out isn't the sole reason I did it, or did you miss the part where I said he has to do what Klaus says . . . If Klaus told him to kill you, Tyler would do it, and we'd have to stop him. There is a world of difference between knocking someone out for tactical reasons, and him knocking her out, because he doesn't trust her to be able to protect herself. Both are acceptable under the right circumstances, and both are understandable, but one leaves her feeling like he doesn't have any faith in her. That is not a nice feeling to have. At least when I've been taken out of a fight, I knew it was because my abilities weren't being questioned. In a way, they were being complimented."

I paused to take in the look of disapproval he threw my way. Matt was the King of Judgement, but then he was the only one who really had the right to judge. He was only one who was truly blameless out of all of us, a real innocent . . . for now. The more involved he got, the more that'd change. I should really be putting him off the idea of going down that path, but really, what choice did he have? It was that, or lose the only thing he had left, his friends, and right now, he needed a boost. He seemed annoyed by what I'd done, but the one thing that clung to him as much as judgement was this prevailing sense of sadness he carried around with him wherever he went. If it's something I didn't like to be around, I'm guessing he didn't like to feel it all the time. I glanced at his suit jacket and asked, "Do you have the medicine bag Elena gave you?"

His automatic reaction was to pat his jacket pocket even as he asked, "Why?", like he didn't want to give me a direct answer.

"Because if you want these two to be safe, then the best place for them to be is away from here. Pull your car around to the side and get them out of here without being spotted by anyone. That means anyone inside or outside the party. Take them to your house, and keep it on lock down until you get a call from one of us. Nobody in or out . . . That medicine bag may keep you hidden, but it won't keep Imelda from being able to find these two if she's - "

Standing, he said, "Spotting for the hunters?"

I had to resist the urge to stomp my foot and growl in frustration. This is why I kept my secrets to myself even if I was crucified for them after they came out. If nothing else, this hunter situation had been enlightening on how quickly a secret spread and to whom it spread. I saw Matt trying not to smile at my obvious annoyance, and my eyes narrowed into a glare. A moment later, I forced myself to accept the idea that this was out there now, because I didn't need it cluttering up my mind tonight. My shoulders dropped before I resignedly answered, "Yeah. If she figures out these two are on the move, then she's only a phone call away from letting whoever she sent know that, and as you can see, Tyler and Caroline can't exactly protect themselves right now . . . You, on the other hand, because you're an unknown with that medicine bag, would make a nice surprise for anyone who decided that they might want to go for the youngest monsters in town first. Always use the element of surprise when you have it."

Finally reaching into his pocket to pull the bag out and look at it, he nodded to let me know he'd keep that under advisement. "This really works?"

"Elena and Jeremy tested it out on Imelda without her knowing. It works." 

"Elena said it'll protect me too?"

"Within reason. A fang is still a fang even if the being that has one is a monster made of magic. A bullet is still a bullet even if it's been hexed by a witch. It can help with the laws of magic, not physics. Got it?"

He nodded before putting it back in his jacket pocket. "It doesn't make me Superman."

"Nope, and even he is vulnerable to kryptonite . . . something you'd do well to remember. Everyone has a weakness. It's not just you." He gave me a look, but I didn't give him a chance to say something snide as I walked away from him. "Not that you can't do a few things here and there to build up your defenses . . . The vervain you're drinking is a good start." Crouching down to sit Caroline up, so she looked more put together than a rag doll thrown haphazardly onto the floor, I added, "I'll keep an eye on them until you bring the car around."

"I don't get you . . . You do the same thing Tyler did to Caroline and somehow convince me it was different and almost the right thing to do. I know you don't like me, but you gave me this to protect myself . . . and now you're giving me advice?"

"Well, I gave you the bag for tactical reasons. I know as well as you do that you're the weak link." I glanced at him over my shoulder, and he ducked his head. "But that doesn't mean you aren't a link." His eyes came back to me, and I said, "You don't think you matter. It is written all over your face whenever these things come up. Accept your limitations and find ways around them, so that you can find your own strengths, because you do matter . . . I mean, look at these two. If someone shoots you with vervain or wolfsbane, do you go down? Not at all. That means you're the one left standing to protect them when they can't do it for themselves . . . And whether or not I think it would be better for you not to be a link in this chain, I know why you are. You might hate what they are. You might hate what they do. And there might be a part of you that is scared of them . . . but they're all you have, and that is something I understand, which is why I gave you advice and am handing them over into your care now." 

Turning his face down again, he coughed uncomfortably to clear his throat before exhaling a laugh. "Guess I've been 'Eve-d' now, huh?"

"What?"

He grinned before looking at me. "Caroline said you do this thing where you say something mean, but somehow turn it around to make a person feel like it's one of the nicest things they've heard in a while. Almost like you know it's what they need to hear."

Moving over to Tyler, so I could prop him up next to Caroline, I shook my head. "Nah, it's just something that comes with the job, an uncanny ability to see other's weaknesses. Like I said, everyone has them."

"But you could leave them as weaknesses instead of trying to fix them."

"Well, I would if you were an enemy." I looked over at him again and saw that he was getting ready to respond, so I rolled my eyes and looked at the door behind him. "I thought you were going to get your car. While you're at it, tell Bonnie the people she's worried about are safe, so she can make herself scarce. Hurry up, before I decide to shoot you in the ass with a tranquilizer dart and just stuff all three of you in the closet." I don't think he believed me, because with a shake of his head and another laugh, he turned to go get the car. As soon as he was gone, I took my dart gun out of it's holster and replaced the tranquilizer dart I'd put in there earlier with another wolfsbane dart before sticking the extra dart in my pocket. As soon as these three were gone, I thought it might be just about show time.


	40. The Battle at Lockwood Manor

Thus far, I'd been able to stay under Klaus's radar. That was part of plan. I wanted Klaus to hear that I was here, but not know exactly where I was for a couple of reasons. I wanted him distracted. A distracted Klaus was a Klaus that would make mistakes. If he made mistakes, he'd be less likely to kill Damon when Damon finally made his move, and I knew that because this was not the school, it'd have to be Damon that made a move on Klaus. Mikael could've gotten into the school, because it was public property. He couldn't get in the Lockwood mansion unless the Mayor invited him in her home, and something told me that Klaus had made it impossible for her to do that, so who did that leave as the best option to stake Klaus? Damon.

So was Klaus distracted? I'd say he was. Mikael would be the greatest distraction of all, but even before he made an appearance, Klaus was distracted. He didn't know where his sister was. He didn't know where I was. He didn't know any of us were planning, but he knew we were planning something. Hence, the large presence of what I could only assume were hybrids and a large number of people Klaus had to have compelled here from out of town. 

I didn't know many people in town, but I didn't get the feeling that most of these people were from Mystic Falls. Stefan must've told him what we'd done to the town's water supply in one of his phoned-in updates, so Klaus had come prepared with innocent bystanders from out of town. Well played by him . . . as was letting Katherine, posing as Elena, know that if he died, then Damon died. Damon's plan was still better. Damon, like Katherine, was wily and great at thinking outside the box. It's just a shame, I couldn't let his plan work. That's the second reason I didn't want Klaus to know where I was.

I needed him to play the part of bait, and sometimes the best bait was bait that didn't know it was bait at all. I needed him to believe he was doomed with every fiber of his being. He needed to see his life's work being destroyed and believe nothing would remain when he was gone. If Klaus believed I was destroying his legacy, then MIkael would, and that meant Mikael would stay focused on Klaus and feel more comfortable turning his back on me even though I had weapons and was using them without him expecting me to be here. 

The downside to my plan? Mikael's arrival. None of this was supposed to make me feel for Klaus. He may not be all bad, but he certainly wasn't a good person. He'd been dropping bodies, like they were nothing for a millennium. He'd made me feel powerless. He made me feel almost permanently on edge. He was dangerous to everyone around him. He literally wanted to bleed my sister dry over and over again, so he could use her blood to make more hybrids . . . and yet, Klaus's father took what I'd thought about Caroline's Dad and Damon's Dad and just blew it out of the water. 

Where some might hear Mikael berating Klaus and think it was long overdue, because someone had to put Klaus in his place, I didn't. If I hadn't already planned to do what I was going to do, listening to Mikael would've made me change my mind about killing Klaus, because before Klaus said, 'My whole life you've underestimated me,' I could tell this was the same kind of thing Mikael had been doing to Klaus since Klaus was a human kid. That didn't mean that I could let Klaus do whatever he wanted once his father was gone, and I wouldn't even though I wasn't going to kill him. It just meant that I knew Mikael is who created the monster we had today, so what did that make him?

Even though Mikael wasn't supposed to hurt Elena, when I heard Klaus yell, "Kill her!" I knew Mikael would, or at least, he'd believe he was killing Elena when he did whatever he was going to do to Katherine. I already knew the reason he went after vampires for food wasn't because he really cared about what happened to humans. I also knew that Klaus yelling that was my cue to move, because there were a few seconds here where it could go wrong for all of us if I didn't do my part, whether I was part of Damon's plan or not.

There's no way that I would let Mikael just kill Elena without doing something to try and stop it. If Klaus was going to believe that Katherine was Elena, then I had to do what I'd do if it was Elena. Mikael may take notice of what I was doing and think I was trying to stop him, but with me targeting the hybrids, it should make Klaus believe his burgeoning empire was crumbling in front of his eyes. Mikael would know that Damon had the only weapon that could kill him and think that with the hybrids between me and him, he had time to stay where he was to watch his son's reaction to losing everything, because I couldn't hurt him, and he was a sadistic dick who hated his son that much. 

When Katherine gave away her real identity and distracted Klaus, Mikael, and the hybrids with her wolfsbane grenades, everything should click into place. That's the moment that Mikael would think I hadn't been trying to protect Elena but was really on his side and wiping out his son's legacy. Then he would only be focused on watching his son die. 

Stepping out from my place in the shadows behind the hybrids, gun trained on the nearest one to me, I shot it in the heart through it's back. I did have normal guns, even though I didn't really get the chance to use them. They weren't as quiet as the dart gun, but they also didn't require me to reload as often, and they were more reliable than the gun with wooden bullets. The bullets got where they were going faster than a dart or wooden bullet, and if you used custom made ammunition, like I did, then they'd make mince meat of a heart with the added bonus that if the monster didn't immediately die, they were loaded with vervain . . . and in this case, a little bit of wolfsbane to knock them out and prevent them from healing until I got a chance to take their heads. Just because I felt for Klaus, didn't mean he got to keep his 'toys,' as his father called them.

One bullet gone. Two more shots fired in quick succession. Two more hybrids down, and three bullets gone. Movement on my right. My right hand went into my jacket to pull out a shuriken that I flung in the direction of the body flashing towards me, as my left hand pulled the trigger on a different hybrid to my left where the larger numbers of hybrids were. The shrunken exploded on impact with the hybrid on my right, and nothing remained of that hybrid's chest as it collapsed on the ground. Back to the two-handed grip on my firearm. One shot. Two shots. Three shots . . . five, six, and seven bullets down, all with a vervain/wolfsbane concoction. Next came special bullets eight and nine.

Katherine yelled, 'Boom,' as she threw the wolfsbane grenades into the crowd of hybrids by the house, and I used the smoke from the grenades to take my shot on Mikael. The timing was perfect on it. Just as I'd suspected, he was a little too obvious in looking over Klaus's shoulder, almost like he was telegraphing to Klaus that someone was approaching, as Damon came vampire sprinting from the other room towards Klaus, and that's what bullet nine was for as I shot Klaus in the chest before Damon got there. The hybrids were still blinded by the grenades, so it bought me time to watch as a blue flash moved in behind Damon, and a millisecond later, he was falling to the floor with with a broken neck as Rebekah took the stake from him. 

Klaus was struggling after I'd shot him. He was looking pretty sick and a little worse for wear, so I'd say vervain, wolfsbane, and white oak ash did more than make him feel like he had a punch to the stomach . . . especially if it was delivered straight into his heart with one of my special bullets. His Dad looked worse. That's all I needed to see. I couldn't stand there watching all day. I was still surrounded by hybrids. Taking aim at one blindly clawing at the air beside me, I fired bullet 10 point-blank into its head, and now the house was to my back, so I'd successfully put myself between the hybrids and it. I was pretty sure that most of his hybrids were out here, and even if they could right now, I would not be letting them interfere in what happened next. 

I needed to be focused on finishing what was left of the hybrids, but the gun was loud, so I re-holstered it, and replaced it with my dart gun and machete, because I couldn't help also wanting to listen to what was happening in the house as Rebkah stabbed her brother in the stomach with the white oak stake and hatefully told him that she knew he killed their mother. I shot 2 hybrids that seemed to be making a comeback from the grenade, and they went down. I saw a blonde hybrid starting to head for the porch even if he couldn't see and darted him too.

It felt like entirely too long before Rebekah finally added that she couldn't kill Klaus. Instead he was going to miss out on the one thing he'd been waiting for 1000 years to see. A second later, she snapped his neck, and caught his body before it fell. Then she was saying my name to get my attention, and I tucked my dart gun away as she tossed me the white oak stake over her brother's head. She picked him up to get him out of there, and now I was looming over the fallen Mikael with the only thing that could kill him in my hand. Checkmate.

Obviously there wasn't as much white oak ash in one of the bullets as there had been in the two darts I'd used on Rebekah, but that and the vervain were enough to put Mikael flat on his back even if it didn't quite knock him out. When you're in a position to kill, you never monologue, especially when it is something you know is more powerful. You just kill, so bringing the stake high above my head, I took a knee next to him as I brought it down through his heart with as much speed and force as possible without ever giving him a chance to stop me or a reason why. 

In almost no time at all, the part of him that'd been stabbed caught fire, and I wasn't expecting that. Normal vampires didn't do that when you staked them. The fire might've started slow, but it didn't take long for him to become completely engulfed in flames, so I had to hop back to keep from being burnt. Well, I guess that solved the problem of what to do with the stake. 

With a dark smirk, I now turned my attention onto what was left of the pack of hybrids, who were more or less starting to come around now. Keeping my hand with the machete down by my side, I reached into my jacket to pull out two more shurikens and fanned them out in front of me, like a deck of cards. To the naked eye, they looked like any other ninja star, and that meant they got to their target faster than a dagger could and were harder to stop, but they'd also been hexed to add a little extra kick when they hit something vampiric. My Dad kept them in his lock up along with some other cool weapons I'd always wanted to try, but I was going to have some fun with these ninja stars first.

I felt a presence step beside me and knew who it was without looking. I'd successfully managed to evade him for a couple of days now. Well, since Damon broke him out of bad-vampire rehab. We'd been in the same room together when I stuck a dagger in MIkael's heart and at school, but other than that, whenever I was home, I'd managed to steer clear of him by bringing back the same skills I'd used when he hadn't known I lived in the house. "Stefan . . . You're a little late."

"Nah, I got here in plenty of time to see Rebekah snap my brother's neck."

"Let me guess. You didn't care."

"Actually, I did . . . I was sort of hoping I'd finally get my freedom if I was the one who stopped him."

Hoping? I glanced at him briefly out of the corner of my eye without taking my eyes off the hybrids that were starting to form in an arch around us. Without their leader, they were waiting for something to kick things off . . . maybe trying to figure out if Rebekah snapping Klaus's neck meant he'd technically died and they should go after Damon? Well, they weren't getting past me. I just needed them to spread out a little more, like the good little wolves they were. "How long have you been a pain in my ass, so you could get your freedom back from Klaus by tricking him into thinking you didn't care enough to go after him?" It's the only thing that I'd thought might explain why he would fake it all the times I hadn't been sure if he was faking it or not. 

"Long enough. I _really_ hate you sometimes." 

"Did Lexi figure it out?"

"Maybe towards the end. She said I was an idiot."

"And you're filling me in on it now, because I screwed up your plans, and it's getting too hard not to blow you're cover, especially now that he's back?"

"Something like that." His eyes flicked back and forth between a few of the hybrids before he said, "So, do you need help with this, or can I leave you to handle it yourself?"

"Do you have a choice?"

His shoulders dropped. "Not really, and thanks for reminding me."

"Well, look at it this way. Now you have an excuse to screw him over by killing all of his hybrids, because you are technically doing what he compelled you to do. It might just be enough for him to reconsider that compulsion."

A look came over his face that suggested he thought that was something he could maybe get behind, and he nodded. "They are without a leader right now, so there's nobody to call them off. I really don't have a choice, do I?" 

I smiled briefly. "Well, you could choose not to help if the bigger threat is our hunter audience. Not sure I should be seen fighting alongside a vampire."

"I already dealt with that . . . You really should've said something about it sooner."

Oh. So the hunter was no more. Was that a relief or not? I'd kind of enjoyed playing hunter games with whoever it had been. I guess I'd wanted to see one up close that wasn't my Dad to see how I matched up against whoever it was. Would I have killed the hunter? I don't know. Maybe if they were serious about killing me, but it was a shade of gray that it might be better for me to stay out of if at all possible . . . Maybe that's what Katherine had meant by the last thing she'd said to me? "So I keep hearing." 

"Yeah, the last person I should've heard about it from was Katherine." 

Sighing as he confirmed what I'd begun to suspect, I muttered, "I'll just add it to the growing list of things I owe her for doing."

"I'm not sure that you do owe her."

"Of course I do . . . If I don't see it that way, then I'll get used to her doing it, and she'll save them all up for a time when I really don't want to pay her back . . . She'll say something like, 'Oh remember the time, I took care of that hunter for you by telling Stefan about it? Now jump into that pit of poisonous snakes to get me the relic I want.'"

"Probably. I'm just not so sure she's thinking that far in advance . . . So, I go left. You go right?" 

That really meant I went left, and he went right . . . the opposite sides from where we were standing. How did I know I that? Well, I guess we had Klaus to thank for that. He is the one who forced Stefan to be on my team when we played that game against him. "On my mark." Those two on the right needed to move a couple more feet. "Just stay out of my way."

"Ah, just like old times."

Getting a tighter grip on one of my ninja stars, I grumbled, "And did you listen then?" Throwing the ninja star into a hybrid on the left, I answered myself. "No."

Stefan said, "But as I recall we still won," as I threw the second star at a hybrid to our left that flashed towards Stefan, and then Stefan was suddenly behind a hybrid to our right and ripping out it's heart. 

A hybrid ran at me from the left, and I raised my machete throat level. Why do all the work when the hybrid was willing to do it for me? He slowed down enough to stop when the blade had gone through his neck, and I replied, "On the second round and only after you listened to me."

As I grabbed ahold of the handle with two hands and sliced out and down to partially finish the job, Stefan responded, "That's not how I remember it," from somewhere to my right. Never letting the motion of my machete stop as I adjusted the grip and swung it over my head, I then brought it down to finish decapitating the hybrid as it hit the ground. As I stood, Stefan grunted, "A little help," and whipping my gun out of its shoulder holster, I aimed it at the head of the hybrid to Stefan's right and pulled the trigger without a moment's hesitation. Now that it wasn't there to try and bite him, Stefan could focus on the one attacking him from the front as I drew my gun on another hybrid that was much closer to me than it had been before my little distraction. 

That hybrid went down, and I was grabbed from behind and lifted off my feet. Before the hybrid could bite me or throw me or whatever the hell it was thinking of doing, I reached for the last star I'd brought, looked up behind me, and shoved the star in his eye. As he opened his mouth to scream at the pain of that, his head exploded, but it didn't do anything to me other than make me fall when the hybrid dropped me as it's body collapsed. I wasn't part vampire, or it would've exploded where it scratched my hand . . . although now, I wondered if one of those stars would work on me if I had actually ingested vampire blood anytime in the recent past. Best not to chance it in the future.

Why could I think about that in the midst of all this? Because I felt the calm that came at the end of a battle, and as I got to my feet and looked around, it confirmed the way I'd felt. All that was left were Stefan and I. 

Klaus was going to be so pissed, but I had killed his Dad for him, and he couldn't mad about that even if he was mad at his sister for making him miss it. Damon was going to be pissed that Klaus wasn't dead and that I hadn't told him what I'd actually done with Rebekah, and he wasn't going to be happy that with Klaus's hybrids gone, Klaus was going to want to replenish those numbers, but if Klaus really wanted to do that, it meant he'd have to leave to find more werewolves, and Elena was still safe with Imelda, so she wouldn't be going with him, which meant I wouldn't have to stop her from going with him. On top of that, I may not have let Klaus die, but I also hadn't let him off easy, which should show Damon that I wasn't on Klaus's side even if I couldn't let the guy die. Both of them had a reason to be angry and both had a reason not to be so angry, so it's the best outcome I could have hoped for under the circumstances.


	41. Awkward Alliance

Surveying the battlefield, I knew there was going to have to be a massive clean up effort involved. To be on the safe side, I was going to have to cut the head off of all the hybrids I'd shot, starting with the ones I'd only shot with darts. I took their heads first and then stood to look at the other bodies scattered around the place. None of them were moving, but it was best to err on the side of caution. 

After the heads were gone, something would have to be done about the bodies. Was getting rid of them Tyler's responsibility, since it was his house, or mine, since I killed them? It seemed a little rude to leave it for him, especially since he was the only hybrid left other than Klaus, and what if I just left these bodies like this, one of the party guests came around this way and found them, called the sheriff, and she gave me a lecture about doing more to keep a lid on what was really going on in this town. Ugh. That seemed more torturous than cleaning it up myself. 

It'd probably be best to burn the bodies, because I was not digging a grave for all of them, but then burning them would require an extremely hot fire, and the last thing I wanted was people from the party coming and dancing around a bonfire of corpses. Guess I hadn't really thought this part of my plan through. I never usually did. Body disposal. Not something I generally thought of in my downtime. It's not until I moved here that I really had to start thinking about it, but I guess it had to be done. I'd get to all of that, but first, I had something else I needed to do. 

Turning to look at Stefan, who appeared to be looking out at the bodies and searching for signs of life the way I was, I waited until he glanced in my direction and then lifted my hand in the kind of wave you'd give if you were greeting someone. "Hi Stefan . . . It's nice to finally meet you." 

I don't shake hands. If the person was a human, then he or she might also be a witch, or have the psychic abilities of one, and then that person might know my secrets with a single touch. If the person was a vampire, werewolf, or other kind of monster, even the human kind of monster, then giving that person your hand seemed a little stupid, because it put you at a disadvantage with them right off the bat. I mean, what happened if whoever it was pulled you closer and stabbed you in the gut or something? Yeah, it was best not to shake hands to be on the safe side. 

Stefan didn't immediately respond, and my hand fell to my side as I said, "You know, when I'm me, and you're you, and neither of us has just climbed out of a grave or at a parent's funeral or when your brother's dying or when we're on the road with Klaus or when you're a flipped switch kind of dick - whether you're faking it or not. I'm Eve."

He ducked his head and nodded in understanding before saying, "Yeah, we haven't had the best start, have we? Not sure we will for a while."

Oh. Ew. I saw something dangling in my hair with my peripheral vision. "Is it because of the brains I think I'm wearing?"

Glancing at me as I made a face and plucked something somewhat gray out of my hair, he paused before his eyes narrowed. "You are, aren't you?"

Flicking the gunk off my hand, I muttered, "So, it would seem."

The smile he was thinking of letting grace his face almost made it and then disappeared as he looked away and shook his head. "It isn't that . . . I'm not me yet. I can't be as long as I'm compelled by Klaus, and even then, it's going to take a long time before I'm able to claw myself out of the hole I'm in this time."

"Maybe not as long as you think. You have something this time that you haven't had all the other times."

Hanging his head, he said, "I can't be with Elena . . . not now. Not after what I've done."

"Maybe. Maybe not. I was talking about your brother, you ninny." 

That flicker of a smile almost made another come back before he looked at me, and then his eyes flitted over to where his brother was. "There's a reason we've spent almost the whole time we've been vampires apart."

"Yeah, well despite that, there's a reason you went to Klaus and were willing to do whatever it took to get the cure too, isn't there?" He looked at me, and I shrugged. They may have a love-hate relationship, but half of that was love. 

Looking at his feet, Stefan waited a moment before finally saying, "Are you saying I did this to myself?"

_Not really, but thanks for taking it the worst way possible._ "Yes and no. You could've told Klaus no and let Damon die, but that wasn't an option for you. Damon or yourself. You chose Damon. It's actually pretty inspiring - in a way. You became the monster you hate because you chose to stay with Klaus to protect Damon and Elena - again, sort of inspiring - to a point. The choices you made when it got too hard to not give into your nature on the road with him were less than admirable, but you know that. It's why you broke up with Elena in Chicago. You're in the mess you're currently in because of what Klaus did to you when he found out you were lying to him, and yes, lying to him was your choice to make. I understand why you did it, and I was with you on it, but it was your choice, and the way he chose to retaliate and what it's done to you since is on him."

"Do you know what he made me do?"

Bite Elena? "Yeah." I gave him a knowing look, and his eyes flitted down again. "And she is afraid of you now, but she's made of stronger stuff than she ever gets credit for having, and the way you've been treating her hasn't helped . . . That's hurting her more."

"I can never be with her again."

"So when you get your freedom from Klaus, break up with her like a normal person to let her know it's really over if that's what you think is best, and leave it at that. I know she blames Klaus entirely, which means she absolves you of everything, but stop intimidating her, and stop trying to prove to her how bad you are, so she'll let you go. That isn't what's best for her."

"And you know what's best for her now?"

"No . . . but I know that isn't." 

Shaking his head as he looked away from me, Stefan said, "I didn't know what to think - when I first found out about you. Maybe at first that Damon had compelled himself a play thing, because he was bored, and then maybe that he hadn't with the way he reacted when you started using yourself to hurt Katherine. I knew you weren't a vampire. He wouldn't have thought you were going to die if you could heal from what you were doing to yourself, but you were definitely the crazy little psycho he said you were. Then you said you were a hunter, and it clicked. You were the one there when Mason turned, and then I thought maybe that you and my brother were using one another, but that was never going to end well, and I needed to protect him, because he was obviously in over his head. Then you got angry enough to end your own life when you realized Katherine was using you against him, so I knew that hunter or not, you did care about him . . . All that was in the span of about 5 minutes, and I still don't have you pinned down. You aren't like either one of them. The entire time we were on the road with Klaus, not once did I ever look at you and think 'Elena' . . . Sometimes when you're being annoying, you do channel Katherine, but it's not very often, and whereas she's all charm, so she's warm and hides her intentions, you just do it to be annoying or mean . . . and I may not be good for your sister, but you bring out the best in my brother . . . You're good for him." Bobbing his head, like he was sure of what he'd said, he looked at me again. "And that is something I wanted to say to you . . . before . . . I could see it at the funeral, and the way you two were together in the cell . . . I've never seen him put someone else first . . . above what he wants."

Scrutinizing him to see how sincere he was being, I found it a little hard to know, but it seemed genuine. Maybe he had thought that before he left with Klaus, but who he was then wasn't who he was now. I didn't know why he brought it up right after I told him to let Elena go if he thought it was what was best for her. He wasn't ready to let her go and see his brother be happy. I don't think he had to necessarily do a whole lot of acting to make it seem like his humanity was still turned off, which is why it'd been so difficult for all of us to see it. 

I may have said 'hi' in an effort to start over again with him, because just knowing he felt human emotions again meant there was some hope there for a fresh start even if it might be a bumpy road, but this sudden moment of sincerity seemed totally out of character, or at least it did with the Stefan I'd gotten know. I didn't trust it. "If you're saying that to get me to help you with your compulsion problem, it's unnecessary. I'll help you anyway. It's better for all of us if you don't have to report anything back to him."

His eyes narrowed slightly as he appraised me. "You sure about that? You are who it would benefit the most if I stay compelled. I think you underestimate how much I don't like you sometimes." Yeah, see, he might as well have admitted he hadn't meant it, right? Maybe he was just responding to my distrust in kind? I didn't know.

"I don't underestimate that hate of yours at all." When he looked away from me, I added, "What, you think I didn't use that to my advantage?" When his eyes came back to me, I said, "His compulsion binds you as well as any chains ever could . . . a little poking and prodding without you being able to do anything about it? I used it, Stefan, so we could have this conversation what feels like a lifetime ago." He looked like he was more than a little annoyed that I was both admitting I'd been intentionally annoying to him and was now scolding him for not saying it'd worked sooner, so I changed the subject. This conversation kept having peaks and valleys to it, and it was both our faults. I didn't want it to completely get derailed. Maybe he just needed to be reminded of what he still had if he was determined to end things with Elena - something I didn't disagree with him on if truth be told. She may not have seen him at his worst over the summer, but I had. "I know of a time Damon put you first."

"When we were human? That's not the same."

"He was there when you got on the train to go off for the war."

"No, he was supposed to be - "

"And he was . . . Lexi was waiting for him in the train station. If you want the details, those are for him to tell, but I will say that he fully intended on going with you, because he wanted his little brother back. She convinced him that he was a bad influence on you, so he let you go, because he thought it was what was best for you." 

He didn't say anything at first, as he looked back at his brother lying on the floor of the house. Snorting, a few moments later, he said, "One time in 150 years . . . and he's like that with you every day."

I wasn't going to stand here and get in an argument about how much Damon really did love Stefan even if he didn't always show it or let Stefan know he did. That was a battle that would take longer than 5 minutes to settle. "You're an ass."

"Well, what would you rather have me say?"

"At this point, I'd settle for 'Good job chopping off those hybrids' heads. I think I'll stick around and help you with the rest before I get rid of their bodies, and then go tell my brother that I thought you were wearing your ring when I tried to kill you the first time, but now I hate you enough to flip my switch when I'm not allowed to kill you.'"

Pointing at me he said, "Yes to all of that, except I'm not cutting off any of their heads, getting rid of their bodies, or telling Damon I've flipped my humanity back on yet."

Oh. So he really had thought I was wearing my ring the night of my birthday party. I guess that was something. "Yeah, I guess chopping their heads off isn't quite the same as biting them off . . . Hey, are you going to go around and try to put them back together again after I done with them?"

"See, that right there is what I'm talking about. That's all you . . . not a hint of Katherine or Elena in any of it. You're just mean for the sake of it."

"Nah, I just don't have a very well developed filter, so it doesn't do a very good job of stopping me from saying what I'm thinking. I only mean something by it about half the time." His shoulders relaxed, as he nodded to let me know that he'd take that into consideration, and I added, "Also, I found what I said highly amusing . . . not everyone gets my humor."

"Is it really funny if you're the only one laughing?"

"Well, there are only two of us here, and I've won over at least half the audience. I'm okay with that." 

He exhaled a frustrated laugh, while saying, "And the worst part is that you are funny more often than you're not. It's really confusing when I want to kill you and laugh at the same time, especially when I don't want to laugh. I am doing everything I can to use my anger to get me through the day, because I can't let myself feel anything else right now . . . and then you go and screw that all up." Looking away from me, he added, "Plus, I don't deserve to laugh."

"Pretty sure laughter isn't something you can deserve . . . nor are the feelings associated with it. They're a natural reaction, so if you find something funny, don't take it so hard . . . You can't really control it any more than you can control blinking a speck of dust out of your eye, and doing that, says nothing about your character or that the anger, guilt, and whatever else you're trying not to feel have really gone away." He flicked a glance in my direction, and I asked, "Why won't you tell him?"

"Because there's something you and I need to do first."

"What?"

"Help me get him home, and I'll tell you."

"I have to finish what I started with these hybrids first, and then I need to burn their bodies . . . You know you don't have to chop off their heads. You have the strength to just rip out their hearts."

Making a face as he looked at one that I'd shot in the chest, he asked, "Is there really much of their hearts left?"

"No." He looked at me, and I said, "Probably not enough to grab, but you could scoop out what's left."

"I am not scooping out a bunch of mushy hearts. Just leave it. They're dead."

"Yeah, well, that's one thing I'm not willing to leave to chance."


	42. Turning the Tables

After my shower, I walked into the living room to face the consequences of my actions. I just had to get through this without telling Damon what my Mom said, because if he knew what she said, it'd make him want to do the opposite. Damon, who was now awake, slammed his drink down on the bar before stalking into my personal space as I made my way around the couch. "What did you do?! We had him, and you - "

Even though I was expecting it, his anger automatically put me on edge, so it was with a fairly dark look that I interrupted him. "Took all his toys away from him and killed his father . . . who was a cannibal, need I remind you."

He took half a step back, but his volume was still a little loud as he said, "This was about Mikael?!"

This is where it got tricky. "It wasn't just about Mikael."

"She did it to save you."

Bad Stefan. I gave him an incredulous look before looking up at Damon as he yelled, "You didn't need to save me. I had him!"

Stefan, still standing near the fireplace and looking as bored as he sounded, said, "His hybrids were ordered to rip you apart as soon as he was dead. The sire-bond doesn't wear off in death."

Nooo! He wasn't helping, and what Damon said to me next is why. "There is no way you could've known that when you took Rebekah. Was there even a hunter, or - "

Again Stefan intervened. "Well, if there wasn't, the guy I killed in the woods was carrying an awful lot of gear for a civilian."

Was he now? I might have to ask Stefan later if he managed to grab any of it. I could use some new weapons. Damon looked back at him, and Elena, who'd been awfully quiet since I walked in here said, "You killed him?"

It really was creepy how easily he was able to slide back into the Stefan I knew and disliked. He shrugged, and the air of indifference surrounding him couldn't have been more apparent. "It was either him or us."

Yeah, once he was uncompelled, he was going to have a lot of making up to do with Elena if he even wanted to be friends. Before she could say what those hurt eyes of hers were thinking, Damon turned back to me. "Why was today the first I heard about this hunter?"

Because Elena has a big mouth? "Because I wanted to deal with it myself."

His eyes narrowed as he studied me. "How? How were you - "

"First, I needed to make a statement."

He paused a beat, and then quickly jumped to the right conclusion. "No, you mean you wanted to put a target on your back!"

Elena's voice came floating across the room, a little angrier this time. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I looked at Elena, and my shoulders dropped as Damon said to her but yelled at me, "It means he would've already branded her a traitor for living with us, but she's young, and he would've overlooked her until he saw her take on those hybrids and Mikael, and then he would've zeroed in on her as his biggest threat in this town. It would've bought the rest of us time if he was hunting her, but a hunter doesn't stop until the target is gone." Speaking exclusively to me, he asked, "But you have a 'no humans' policy, so what would you have done when he did come for you?" His eyebrows rose in expectation of a response, but he didn't really wait for me to give him one as he said, "And if you had to think about it even that long, you would be dead." 

With a fairly straight face, I replied almost instantly. "Maybe I wanted to see how I matched up against whoever it was, but if Stefan beat him, then I guess I'm better than he was."

"How can you joke about it? The man is dead!" 

I think Stefan, Damon, and I all looked at Elena for entirely different reasons, but we were still more on the same page with one another than we were with her. At the same time Stefan said, "What part of it was him or us did you not understand," Damon said, "Did you miss that he wouldn't have stopped until she was dead," and I muttered, "Why wouldn't I? I never met him." 

There's a time Stefan would've agreed with her, which might be why she glanced at him first with a defeated look. Damon was Damon - no surprises there. Eventually, she focused all of her disgust on me. "He wouldn't have even been here if it weren't for you bringing Imelda into our lives. His death is on you."

"Well, you can blame me for it if you want, but I don't. His choice of profession, his hatred, his thrill of the hunt - those are what lead him there, and he knew the risks, because he knows we play by their rules, not yours."

Stepping closer, she yelled about the thing she was really angry about, "Why did you do it?! We had a plan, and it needed to work . . . And don't tell me it was to save Damon. If you really cared about him, you wouldn't have set Rebekah loose on him, and - "

How could she call into question that I cared about him? "I fixed it so she wouldn't kill him."

"How?! What did you do?"

Why was she still yelling? Did she actually think I sold one of us out? My dealings with Rebekah were done. My eyes narrowed as I calmly said, "I gave her what she really needed and told her that we'd be even if she didn't kill Damon."

"And what did you promise her? What did she need - "

"To be there . . . Not everyone can hang back, let others do their killing for them, and feel no guilt about it. You know, it takes an incredibly special person to do all that and then judge those who did do something . . . If she wanted him dead, then she owed it to both of them for it to be her, not the father who hated him . . . If she didn't want him dead, then she should be there to save him."

Zeroing in on the catty thing I'd said, Elena quickly responded, "I wasn't hanging back and letting others do the killing for me! I stabbed her, so - "

Anyone who had it in them to at least make an appearance tonight could be angry with me, and that included Bonnie. Elena hadn't earned that right. "Yeah? Then where were you tonight?"

"You knew Damon's plan was for me to stay here in case Mikael did what he did to Katherine! How can you say that?!"

"Because I wasn't supposed to be there either, and yet nothing was ever going to stop me from being there. I wasn't going to let anything happen to any of them. But since you weren't there, let me fill you in on how it turned out. Caroline - safe. Tyler - safe. Matt - safe. Bonnie - safe. Damon - alive. Katherine - alive. Stefan - alive. Mikael - dead. All of Klaus's out-of-town-hybrids - dead."

Stepping into my space, she yelled, "Klaus - alive!"

"He didn't come out of it unscathed, but I'm not going to let him die."

"Why not?! You know what he has planned for me! He's going to want me to make more hybrids."

"You are safe with Imelda. If he wants to make more hybrids, he'll need to leave to do it. Just give him some blood and let him go."

"Imelda needs to go too."

"Well, she can't, because we need her."

"We wouldn't if you'd just let Damon kill Klaus! You killed all his hybrids, so none of them could've gone after him, and - "

"If Klaus dies at any point in time, I will lose Damon, and I am not letting that happen."

Maybe it was watching Elena and I argue it out, but Damon and Stefan had gone quiet until then. "What?"

Oops. Why was she so infuriating? I shot her a glare before my eyes flitted up to Damon, and I took a deep breath. I could withhold information from him, but I couldn't lie to him. "It's the last thing my Mom said to me. I can't let Klaus die, or I'll lose you. I think she meant you'll die, and I don't think she meant just tonight. I will not go through that with you again . . . but I'm not on his side."

Getting angry, the second he'd processed what I'd said, Damon turned away from me with a frustrated growl. "I knew your Mom found a way to screw me over!"

Yep. Now all his anger was on Mom instead of me. Poor, Eve, blindly trusting anything her Mom tells her. He wasn't going to believe anything she'd told me about this. "All Mom wanted was to make things right with me."

He turned to look back at me. "So you can tell me with absolute certainty that the woman who hated me and wanted me dead suddenly - "

"Yes." The finality of my answer made him pause, so I drily added, "Death is a pretty life changing experience."

Reluctantly grinning, he finally said, "That was bad." It had been a bad joke, but that was kind of the point. I gave him a small smile and the tension left his body once again. "The white oak stake is gone?" I nodded, and he sighed before turning away from me again. "In all of your scheming did you have a plan on what to do about Klaus after we tried to kill him?"

"Well, first we have to get him to let Stefan off his leash."

Looking back at his brother, Damon shook his head. "Klaus isn't going to let Stefan go now. Killing him was the only way to do that."

"Not the only way."

Turning to look back at me, he quickly said, "No . . . You're not going near him. I didn't miss the part where you said you killed ALL of his hybrids that aren't Tyler Lockwood."

"Let Stefan and I handle it. We have a plan, and I think it's a good one." 

Turning with a threatening scowl to look back at Stefan, he yelled, "What is she talking about?"

Playing the part of being an ass to perfection, Stefan shrugged. "She stole my chance to get my freedom back, so now she owes me."

Stalking into his brother's space, Damon got dangerously tense as he spat out, "I don't know what she told you she'd do, but - "

"Oh, it's already done . . . There's no going back. The only way is through."

"Then she's out, and I'm in - What - "

"I'm afraid that's not gonna work, Brother."

I think Damon may have taken the stake I had hidden under the mantel and stabbed Stefan with it if Elena hadn't shoved me. "What did you do now?!" 

I'd been more focused on stopping a fight from breaking out between the brothers, and it made me more than a little angry to be blindsided like that, so I quickly rounded on her. "Don't touch me, you back-stabbing little wretch. You weren't supposed to say anything about the hunter, and definitely not today of all days. You went into my room and stole _my_ dagger after I told you I felt violated when you went in there to look through my research, and those aren't the first times you've metaphorically stabbed me in the back - the exact same way you actually did it to Rebekah. Now I see that's just who you are, and I trust you even less, so I'm not telling you anything about anything."

Pointing her finger in my face, she quickly responded, "You said if you saw me with any weapons, you wouldn't train with me again, so I knew you'd say no, and - "

"Nope. That doesn't work for me. If you believed I thought Rebekah was going to intervene, and you didn't know that's what I wanted, then you may have thought I'd say 'no' to you doing it, but you'd also just think I'd do it for you when you told me your idea. Why'd you sneak into my room and steal my - "

"Who said it's yours? It's a Gilbert family heirloom. I have as much right to it as you do."

Really? I don't remember there being two princesses who used the daggers to slay Originals in the story. Taking off my ring, I looked at it and said, "You want this too? I mean you can't use it, but maybe if you have kids some day - "

"Like it'll do you any good. If you've got hunters after you, then it won't work, will it?"

My eyebrows rose. "So you do want it."

"That's not what I said."

"Close enough."

"Why is it you're the only one who gets our family's hand-me-downs? I may have been adopted, but I am still a Gilbert."

What the fuck was she talking about? In total confusion, I said, "Yeah? Don't you have plenty of your own stuff, like the compass and - "

"You're missing the point."

"Well, maybe that's because you're the most confusing person I've ever met."

In a huff, she turned to leave. "Forget it."

"Did something happen?" She stopped, and I said, "I think there's another reason you didn't ask me about the dagger, and you want to say it, but you don't, or you'd make a hell of a lot more sense. What happened between the last time I saw you and now . . . I mean other than me stealing Rebekah and screwing up your plans?"

Sounding sad, she asked, "Did they keep the wrong twin?"

"What?"

Turning, but not enough to look at me, she said, "Imelda said that they kept the wrong twin . . . that it would've made more sense to keep me hidden instead of you . . . She said that you could've had a normal life, and then if Klaus showed up, he would've used you in the ritual if he hadn't known about me, but when it didn't work, he would've thought it was because the little differences he hadn't wanted to admit were there, were there because you weren't the doppleganger, so if John brought you back the way he did me, you would've been okay, and Klaus would've gone back to looking for his next doppleganger without ever finding me or coming back here . . . She said I stole your life . . . that after I got all the doppleganger magic, I used it to throw the witches off in their predictions, so I could have the life you should've had."

And that meant these hunter heirlooms were suddenly hers now? No, I don't think that's quite what she was thinking. She felt guilty, that much was obvious, but it was almost like she was also trying to prove she belonged in my family instead of the happy family she'd had. How strange. I didn't know how to address that, so I didn't. "You told her about that part of our history?" She shrugged a shoulder, so that was a 'yes'. She really needed to learn to watch what she said to Imelda. "Well, first of all, you were a fetus. You didn't have the cognitive skills to throw the witches off."

"I had enough to try and kill you."

I snorted, and she finally looked at me. "You were a greedy baby that liked the magic you were getting from your twin, so you kept stealing it. There was no conscious decision on your part to kill me."

"Well, maybe it was the same with the witches. Maybe I didn't know I - "

I shook my head. "Nah, Mom and Dad got the message loud and clear on what had to be done before they made the decision to give you all the magic, so it was when we both still had it." 

Her shoulders relaxed, while she said, "So you don't think they kept the wrong twin?"

"No. They were told to keep the oldest."

"But what if there was a mix-up when they weren't looking."

I tried not to smile as I said, "Then it really would've screwed things up if they'd swapped you into the ritual to keep Klaus from breaking the curse."

She nodded, while she absorbed that. "But it does make more sense to have kept me hidden, doesn't it?"

"Yes and no. Yes for the reasons Imelda said, but no, because in a way, letting you have a normal life meant you got to act as bait to draw him here, so I could replace you. If I had, hybrids wouldn't be something the world would have needed to worry about until the next doppleganger was born, and that's what the witches wanted. There's no guarantee Klaus would've thought I was the doppleganger if I'd had your life. There are enough differences that he may have known straight away that I wasn't, and if he didn't, then his witches would have . . . How did this come up?"

"Why? What are you going to do about it?"

My hands clenched in frustration even as I took a slow breath to remain calm. "Well, for starters, I'm going to tell you something I thought I made clear, but obviously didn't. Stop talking to Imelda about things that are important to keep hidden . . . homework; frivolous dances; a healthy debate about what's on TV . . . those are okay. Letting her know the identity of the blonde vampire that she saw when she first got here is not okay, and - "

"I didn't tell her who Caroline is."

"Well, she knows . . . Maybe she saw a picture with Caroline's name written in glitter under it or Jeremy said something, I don't know. The point is that she knows, because you aren't being careful enough. She knows about Tyler too." Elena looked for a moment, like she wanted to argue with me, but a second later, her shoulders dropped in acceptance, so I said, "Telling her anything about the life you knew before you met Stefan - okay. Telling her family secrets, no matter how small - not okay. She'll find a way to use them against you - against all of us."

"Then why are you working with her?" 

"Hm?"

Her eyes narrowed at my innocent non-answer. "I know you are. Why is it okay for you - "

"A. Start using some of those skills to start spying on her instead of me. B. Because I know how to do it without telling her anything important, and I know that about half of what she says is either a flat out lie or misdirection of some kind, but that also means that half of what she says is something I can use - like there being a hunter. She never specifically said that she'd called anyone, but I figured it out, and I was right, or Stefan wouldn't have found anyone tonight, and we would've been caught unprepared - not that it should've ever come to that. You're supposed to be our inside person with her, Elena, and if you are, then you need to be better at it."

She could've gotten mad at that. Instead, she paused a beat, and then said, "Since when?"

"Since she moved into the house. Who better to have keeping an eye on her than a person who lives with her? You have the potential to know what she's doing at all times, even if you're not always there, but you're letting her run the show."

"Why didn't you tell me any of that?"

"Because I thought it was obvious." Now she was angry, but as she opened her mouth to respond, I said, "No seriously, I thought it was obvious. It's what I would do. My experience with other people is limited, so I expect other people to do what I would. I didn't think I'd have to spell it out to you."

She hesitated, but must've still needed to vent that anger she felt at being scolded somewhere, because a few moments later, she threw a glare over my shoulder and asked, "Don't you two have anything better to do?"

My eyes followed hers. Damon and Stefan were lounging against the bar, drinks in hand, and watching what would appear to be something they found highly entertaining. Stefan looked over his shoulder at Damon. "I'm good . . . You?"

Damon shrugged. "Yeah, I think watching them makes me feel oddly good about us."

One of Stefan's eyebrows arched. "You know, I think you might be on to something . . . That reminds me." Reaching into his wallet he pulled out a 20 and handed it to Damon as he said, "I believe I owe you this."

I almost groaned in shame when Elena took the bait even though her tone made it clear she was less than enthused. "For what?"

Taking the money and putting it in his wallet, Damon smirked. "Oh, nothing . . . just a nice friendly wager between brothers. You wouldn't understand."


	43. Pillow Talk

I tensed as I felt someone disturb my sleep, but then instantly relaxed as the light hint of cologne enveloped me. I threw an arm around him snuggled into his side before he murmured, "Hey."

With a sigh, I whispered, "Hey," and Damon rolled to face me as he wrapped an arm around me and said, "I didn't mean to wake you."

My eyes stayed closed, but my lips turned up into a small smile. "Sure you did . . . You want to talk."

Not even bothering to deny it, he asked, "What are you planning with my brother?"

"Nothing bad."

Tracing small patterns on my shoulder, he tried again. "Well, did you think what you had planned tonight was bad?"

I breathed out a, "No," and he responded, "Then I need you to tell me."

"Do you think what I did was bad?"

He was quick to quietly reassure me. "No . . . not bad . . . dangerous . . . and you should've told me."

I relaxed a little. "You wouldn't have let me do it. You want him dead and nothing my Mom said would have stopped you."

"Maybe not, but you still should've told me."

I drowsily muttered, "Probably would've knocked me out to keep me side-lined."

He hesitated and then said, "What if I promise never to do that again?"

"You can promise, but I don't think it's a promise you'll keep."

"What if I mean it?"

"You might mean it now, but - "

"No, I'll mean it forever if it means you'll stop holding things back from me and doing these kinds of things on your own." Oh. My eyes opened a fraction to look at him, and he said, "It's something I already told myself I wouldn't do again, and now I'm telling you . . . I knew you were going to show up there tonight, and I didn't do anything to stop you, did I?"

I gave him an almost imperceptible shake of the head. He hadn't, but then I'd also made myself scarce early in the day, so he hadn't had the opportunity. He did seem to be serious about what he was saying now, but I still wasn't sure. When he got desperate, anything went. "I would've thought you'd be angrier than you are."

"Think your sister may have stolen my thunder just a tad . . . and I know if your Mom told you - "

With a heavy breath, I stopped him by saying, "You're not going to stop looking for a way to kill him, are you?"

"Nope."

"Why? You have your brother back. I'm back. I'll keep Elena safe, so - "

"And that's the problem. You almost died just to get her body back. You did die because of the head space you were in after the fight you had with my brother, and - "

"No that was me, not - "

"I don't care. It wouldn't have happened if it weren't for him, and if he doesn't kill you for killing his hybrids, then he's going to follow through on what he said about training you, but he's not going to stay here to do that. He'll leave when he gets bored, or to go make more hybrids, or whenever he feels like, and he'll take you with him when he goes, the same way he was planning to take you when I found him at the hospital, and I am not letting him take you from me again."

He was getting angry even if he was trying to stay quiet to keep from completely derailing my moment of calm, so I tried to bring it back to what was important to me. "And if you die?'

"Then I die, but if it means he's dead too, then at least I'll know you'll be safe."

"Safe from what? There's always something bigger and badder out there if you go looking for it."

"Eve - "

"And who says I'd let him take me anyway?"

"You wouldn't have a choice. You'd do it to keep him from killing me or Elena . . . Eve, he's got to go."

"Think I finally understand what you meant when you said I was your best friend and worst enemy . . . I won't let you take you from me either."

A flash of annoyance across his face, and then he forced himself to try and relax. A moment later he said, "What if we turn it into our game? I try to kill him. You try to stop me." I paused, and he gave me that uncertain, but hopeful look as he said, "If it's a game, then we can't get mad at what the other one does to try and beat the other." It automatically made me lean close enough to lightly bump noses with him. I would've kissed him, but I didn't want him to think I was agreeing with his game. I guess I was just a sucker for that look of his, the one that said, 'I'm trying here, and I think I've got it right, but do I?'

He tilted his head to touch his forehead to mine as he pulled himself closer, and I sort of thought this might be my 'happy place.' It was safe and calm and it felt like there was nothing outside of it except the two of us. I wanted to play his game, because he was honestly trying to find a way to keep Klaus from coming between us, but if we turned it into a game, I didn't want the competition to make me lose sight of why I was playing, and losing this game was simply not an option for me. "What if I find a way to make him disappear without killing him?"

"Disappear how?"

"I don't know. I haven't figured it out yet, but I will."

Not wanting to argue or agree, he hummed in the negative before saying, "It's just a temporary solution."

"But that's all we need, right? I have a temporary life."

He didn't tense. In fact, he did the opposite and relaxed before quietly saying, "But what if you don't?"

His tone held that same boyishly uncertain quality to it that his look sometimes did, and maybe that's why I didn't shove the conversation to the side this time. "Damon, I can't be a vampire."

"Why not?"

"You know why. I'm already a killer. Sometimes, killing is the only way I can relieve stress. That'll get enhanced, and - "

"But it'd be just like the way you are with vampires. You don't kill all of us. You see something in some of us that makes you want to do the opposite of what you should do. It makes you want to protect us. I think it'd be the same if you were a vampire. I think you even have who your meal of choice would be already picked out, because it's what Isobel taught you to do."

"And the wallowing?"

Taking a slow measured breath, Damon eventually said, "That might be a problem . . . but I'll be there to talk you out of doing things that might bring on those kinds of lows. I won't fail you the way I've failed Stefan."

"Do you think I'd be like him?"

"No. You wouldn't be a ripper, and I don't think you'd flip your switch unless you lost someone important, or for survival, the way you do now, but I wouldn't want you to feel that kind of guilt and self-loathing times 10." When I didn't respond, he continued, "You already know it doesn't change everything about you. It just enhances things that are already there, and it won't matter to me what you do. I'll never judge. I just want you with me. I don't want to always have that 'this is only temporary' in the back of my mind whenever I'm around you."

"But isn't that just part of life? It's supposed to be temporary. It's what makes living so bittersweet, but it's also what gives us the drive to really live, because what's the point if it never ends?"

"And what am I supposed to do, eventually start calling you my grandmother when I introduce you to people?" I exhaled a laugh, and he quickly said, "I'm serious." 

Bringing my hand up to the side of his face to offer him some comfort, I whispered, "I know . . . but I think we both know the life expectancy of a hunter is shorter than most."

Closing his eyes to hide his discomfort as he nodded, he asked, "What am I supposed to do when that happens?"

If he felt about me, the way I felt about him, then I didn't know. He'd spent 150 years pining over Katherine. I didn't want him to do that over me. I should tell him I wanted him to move on and to do it without shutting off his humanity, going on a bender, and massacring entire villages, but I knew that was easier said than done. If I cared about him, and I did, I needed to take how he felt about all of this seriously. "Can I think about it?"

His eyes popped open as he said, "You've already had years to think about it, and it hasn't changed anything."

"True, but I sort of stopped thinking about it after Mom died. Give me a couple more years . . . That'd make me at least a little closer to the age you were when you turned, and if you're just going to go and die trying to kill Klaus, then I won't consider it at all, because what would be the point without you."

Lifting his head to look at me, he waited briefly before saying, "That almost sounds like 'yes.'"

"Almost."

He knew where I was going with this and gave me a slight glare. "But you're going to use it to keep me from killing Klaus, aren't you?"

"Now that you mention it."

Smirking as he settled his head back on my pillow, he murmured, "And what if I say I've changed my mind?"

"I'd say you were being fickle." 

His eyes took in the sight of me, while he considered it, and I thought there was a chance he wasn't as set on the idea as he'd seemed. It wasn't that I was blackmailing him into leaving Klaus alone. It was that I'd successfully shut this conversation down the few times it'd been brought up, and now that I hadn't, he was thinking of all the angles in a way he normally didn't, because normally, he just wanted the conversation to start. "Maybe I think it'd be better than you going to an early grave as a hunter, but it's not the life I want for you either . . . Plus, you're not supposed to use my undying love against me like that."

Deciding to change the subject, I gently mocked him by saying, "You really are the cheesiest vampire I've met."

"I prefer, hopeless romantic."

"Well, you can prefer it all you want, but you're really just cheesy. You're lucky you make up for it by being a badass."

A brief smile shot across his face at the backhanded compliment. "Yeah? You think it might be a problem at the vampire convention?"

Closing my eyes, I hummed in the affirmative and then said, "Without a doubt, but you'll have plenty of practice kicking Stefan's ass between now and then if he ever overhears what you say half the time."

There was a hint of humor in his voice as he quietly said, "I think you're exaggerating. It's nowhere near half."

"Feels like it."

"See, you say that, but I think you love it. You just don't want to admit it."

Turning it around on him, I asked, "Really? How do you figure?"

"Well for one thing, I know that deep down, you're a princess at heart, and princesses love romance." 

My chest shook, as I tried to contain it, but I quickly lost out to a short burst of giggles as my eyes opened. "I actually thought about that tonight."

Quite pleased that he'd won that time, Damon grinned as he asked, "Was it before or after you staked your Original?"

Smiling, I whispered, "After . . . it's when Elena wanted to know why the dagger was mine. I might've thought there weren't two princesses in the story."

It made him grin, and then a few moments later, he said, "I want to hear it."

"Hear what?"

"The story."

"You want a bedtime story?"

He chuckled again before saying, "Consider it background research. I want to know what Little Evie felt she had to live up to when she got older." I didn't want to tell him the story. It was mildly embarrassing. I went to quickly shake my head, and he said, "It's either that, or you tell me what you and my brother are planning."

He'd find that out soon enough, but for him to be safe, his reactions had to be authentic, so I couldn't tell him now. With a sigh, I rolled onto my back. "Once, there was a princess with no name. She killed Originals. The end."

"That's it?"

"Yep."

Resting his head on my shoulder, he asked, "Well, why didn't she have a name?"

"Her kingdom was not a peaceful one. It was at constant war. To keep her safe, she was spirited away from her kingdom to live in a far away land on the day that she was born, and it had to be done quickly - so fast that she wasn't given a name, but that was okay because without a name, her real identity was kept a secret from the kingdom hers was always fighting."

"So she just didn't have a name?"

"Well, if she had a name, then on cold dark nights, when she attacked her foes around the campfire, it wouldn't exactly sound scary for them to scream, 'Ah, Princess,' before she cut them down. A nameless, faceless, but legendary figure is much scarier." 

Exhaling a silent laugh, he quietly responded, "Tell me, he didn't think you could really go around without a name."

Biting my lower lip to keep from smiling, I said, "Well, I know my name was a secret my Mom kept from him for a while. She'd had to call me something, and when she heard Elena's name, she went through names that started with 'E' and came up with Eve, because I was born first."

I felt him move as he lifted his head to look down at me. "How long was it before he knew?"

"I don't know. It was before I can remember. I think he knew by the time he got me the red keyboard, and I got that when I was 2."

"For such a tightly held secret, you sure did fill me in on it pretty fast."

"Well, you thought I was Elena, and then you thought I was Katherine. I had to keep you from killing me somehow."

The corners of his mouth turned up briefly before he said, "I remember. You caught me at a bad time, and I still let you walk away."

"Why did you?"

"You didn't flinch." I was a little confused by that, and he said, "When I pinned you, you looked bored, like it was an inconvenience, and I think you insulted me." He snorted at the memory before saying, "So I tried again . . . I would've bitten you, but you didn't flinch then either. It was like you had no idea what I was going to do and at the same time knew all too well what I was going to do."

"The most trusting and untrusting person you've met?"

"Exactly . . . and it was the same when you showed me the scars on your neck. It was like you were taunting me by baring your neck and at the same time like you didn't know that's what you were doing. You definitely made yourself a curiosity that I had to see again . . . Plus, you knew Katherine."

"But you didn't know I was dangerous until the farmhouse." Now it was his turn to look confused. "When you were dying and thought I was Elena, you said that's when you knew you were in trouble."

A slow smile spread across his face before he said, "Yeah, I remember thinking 'this girl is going to kill me, and I'll probably let her do it without putting up much of a fight'." Laughing, he added, "That deadly gymnast routine you did was hotter than anything I'd ever seen Katherine or Elena do . . . You dazzled me again the first time you staked me. I think that's the first time I noticed your eyes were different. It wasn't until I was climbing through your apartment window, even though I was sure you'd set a trap for me, that I knew it was impossible for me to stay away."

"You seriously thought I invited you in without you knowing and was carving someone up to set a trap for you? Why'd you ask if you could come in?!"

Resting his head back on my shoulder, he laughed again. "I felt like I had to let you know I was there, so you could have a chance to change your mind. I wasn't looking forward to having to kill you if you didn't. I wanted you to have a fair shot."

"That's insane."

"I know. I can't explain it. You were intriguing . . . but then when I found you, it sort of changed. The night before, I was angry, and maybe I thought about killing you, but I didn't go over there to kill you. Something didn't add up, but I didn't know what it was, and I wanted information. I just lost sight of you being a fragile human for a fraction of a second, and that's all it took. I didn't realize how much I had hurt you until I wasn't angry anymore, but it was different when I found you the next night. Mostly, I wanted to kill whoever did that to you." He nuzzled into the crook of my neck a little more, and it sent tingles down my spine. He smiled at my involuntary reaction and said, "Now back to the story . . . I want to hear it. Tell me all about this kingdom that was always at war with hers."

"Well, it was ruled by a family of vampires, and the King was cruel, heartless, and bloodthirsty. He never showed mercy, and he took no pleasure in the finer things in life. His only concern was ruling his household with an iron fist and dominating the kingdoms around him. Once his subjects were created, he no longer cared what they did so long as they served as cannon fodder in his wars, but it was also his subjects' hunting infringements on the outskirts of the princess's kingdom, that sparked the wars, so it was endless cycle of war."

"Tell me more about this King."

"He doesn't really sound like Klaus. He sounds more like - "

"Mikael?"

I nodded, and didn't expect him to smile as he said, "So, the Princess didn't just kill an Original, she slayed the King tonight." Maybe that's why he wanted to hear the story. He wanted to forgive me, and maybe he already had, but the story would help him do that more completely.

"Yeah, I think she did . . . Of course in the story there was no way for her to kill him, and the daggers didn't work on him, so she had to use the daggers on his family members to take them one by one and weaken him that way . . . but if she'd known about the white oak stake, she definitely would've used it the first chance she had."

"Well, now you can rewrite the story, so she did."

"Then it won't be the story I heard when I was growing up."

"Think I'll like it better this way. Start at the beginning, and don't leave anything out. I want to hear it all, but don't forget to change the ending." Okay maybe there was a part of him that really did just want a bedtime story. Well, if it's what he wanted, then I guess it's the least I owed him after what I did to him tonight.


	44. Eye of the Tiger

There was a knock at my bedroom door, and Damon pulled me closer to try and keep me from getting up. He stayed in here quite a lot, mostly to make sure Stefan and Rebekah left me alone, because all they had to do was break my door down and throw something at me to hurt me, but Rebekah hadn't been back since our attack on Klaus, and he'd stayed in here every night since. I think it's because he was concerned about Klaus smashing up my window to get at me or something. I don't know. I didn't ask. He was being protective without being over the top about it, so I was okay with it.

"Eve . . . I know you're in there." I smiled at Stefan's hushed yell through the door. 

Groaning as he stretched, Damon threw the door a look and grumbled, "Not today, Stefan . . . If you want to bother her, wait until Monday morning when you see her in class."

There was a pause. "Eve, I need to see you, and it can't wait . . . That thing we're supposed to do . . . It's happening."

I was out of the bed a second later, but I still think Damon beat me to it. I went to go brush my teeth as he went to the door and flung it open. "And what thing would that be?" Even if Stefan had wanted to answer, there was no time for him to do it as both their heads turned to face the front of the house. Damon asked, "Who is that?" and Stefan gave him a look over his shoulder as he said, "Who do you think?" and then they were both leaving my room. That's okay. I needed a few moments to prepare myself. I threw some cold water on my face to wake me up. There. Brushed teeth. Fresh face. Hair in a messy pony tail that worked to sell the idea that I wasn't a threat.

Running out of my room, I got to the living room as Klaus said, "First things, first. I take it Mikael is dead."

I heard Stefan use his foot to slide something out from behind the couch as he said, "We gathered his ashes . . . in case you wanted proof this time." 

Klaus responded with a short, tight laugh that he didn't mean at all. "Well, I won't be taking your word for it. I hope you understand."

Opening the lid on the plastic bucket, Stefan said, "Think there might be a few identifiable pieces, but you'd have to dig for them . . . pocket watch, ring . . . " 

I'd already dug through Mikael's ashes for those pieces, so they were right on top for Stefan to find. "Let me see those." There was a moment of silence as Klaus examined the items, and then I heard him clear his throat. "He could've given these to you, and - "

Stefan cut him off as he dug out another thing near the top. "Piece of the stake that killed him?"

Yeah, Damon didn't know about that, so he didn't sound all that happy when he asked through clenched teeth, "I thought it burnt up when he did. What are you doing?" like Klaus wouldn't hear him. There was maybe enough there to make a wooden bullet, but I wouldn't trust it not to explode in my face if I tried to use it with the heat damage it'd already sustained. I guess if one of the guys wanted to try throwing it at Klaus, like a dart in the hopes that it would get the job done, they could try, but it'd probably splinter on contact. Still, it's all that remained of the only weapon he knew of that could kill Klaus, so I could see his reluctance in wanting to just hand it over. His reaction really worked in mine and Stefan's favor though, because it started building the obvious tale that Damon had no idea what Stefan and I had been up to lately, so it should help keep him safe through these negotiations, which is why we hadn't told him anything.

Starting to believe that Mikael was really gone, Klaus cleared his throat again as he tried to hide the regret that tinged his voice as he said, "Tell me the truth. Is this a replica?" 

"No." Stefan being compelled to do whatever Klaus told him to do did have it's uses. He couldn't lie if Klaus told him to tell him the truth. If the stake wasn't a replica, then it obviously meant that Mikael was gone, because his children knew he'd never allow that stake to be destroyed as long as Klaus was alive.

"Then it would seem a celebration is in order." Klaus couldn't have sounded less like he meant that. His sister really got him good. Taking away his chance to kill Mikael and giving him that kind of closure had been the best way to punish him without killing him. "But it's one that'll have to wait. Now, that that's out of the way . . . It would seem that I'm missing something. You two wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

I grabbed the remote for the stereo that I'd hidden out here in the hall for just this occasion and hit play. I may not have expected it to be morning when this happened, but that didn't mean I wasn't prepared, and I'd earned a kick ass introduction. I waited through the opening bars and then prepared to make my entrance when I heard the trademark, _Dun . . . dun, dun, dun . . . dun, dun, dun . . . dun - dun - dun._

The second the first set of punchy chords at the start of _Eye of the Tiger_ had finished blaring, I came into the doorway with just the right amount of attitude and small smirk on my face. Klaus was looking at Damon and Stefan, like he thought they were behind it and was less than amused, and the Salvatore brothers didn't look like they had a clue what was happening. "Aren't you missing a _few_ things, Klaus?" 

I grinned at the expression on his face as he caught sight of me and then bounded down the steps to take a victory lap around the room as the introduction really kicked in on the song.

Phase 1, make Klaus believe Stefan still had his humanity turned off. If Stefan could feel human emotions, it meant he could feel anger, and that feeling often lead to revenge. If Stefan didn't feel anything, then he would be seen as less of an immediate threat - not that he had any idea what I was doing right now. He'd left it up to me to decide on how I would respond when Klaus finally made his first move. Stefan's only job during Phase 1 was not to respond at all, and that's why I had to make it as difficult as possible for him not to break. Klaus may not even be aware of it if Stefan didn't respond, but his subconscious would, and that's what mattered. 

As the lyrics started, I started a fun, but ridiculous victory dance.

_Risin' up, back on the street_  
_Did my time, took my chances_  
_Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet_  
_Just a man and his will to survive_

Stefan didn't crack once. 

Damon looked confused, then mildly horrified that I was blatantly admitting that whatever had been taken was taken by me. He still couldn't help the snort that escaped him when I started dancing.

Klaus looked . . . well, he seemed annoyed, and then slightly amused. 

_So many times, it happens too fast_  
_You trade your passion for glory_  
_Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past_  
_You must fight just to -_

The music cut out, and I looked over to find Klaus standing by the stereo. "Very funny, Little Wolf Killer . . . now if you don't mind - 

It was time for Phase 2 to commence. "Wait, wait, wait . . . You might not really want to celebrate, but I do. You're about to realize how good I got you." I hoped Damon got the meaning behind this song choice. I was his Little Tiger, not Klaus's Little Wolf Killer. He'd never seen Klaus and I in the same room together, so I thought the nickname might be a problem.

Using the remote, I hit play again. _It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight_

Again the music cut out. "Do you think this is a game?"

"Absolutely, and I won . . . You're not jealous are you?"

I found the look of immediate surprise that came over his face funny, but it was quickly hidden as he said, "I can assure you that I am not - "

"Really? Because I think I'm feeling something you'll never feel now that I've taken out your only real adversary." I hit play again and started to lip lynch with the remote, while I pointed at him with an 80s hairband flourish for the next lyrics. _Risin' up to the challenge of our rival_

He turned it off again. I turned it on with a look that told him to stop it as I skip-danced backwards to the music and continued lip synching. _And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night. And he's watching' us all with the eye . . . of the tiger._

He turned it off and said, "If you turn that on again, I'll tear it out of the wall and throw it at you."

I hesitated with my finger on the button. The key was to annoy him, not enrage him. There was a fine line, and I had to walk it, because if he felt one, he wouldn't feel the other, and annoyance meant I was endearing, but he wanted me stop. Enraged meant death. "Nah, you won't . . . If you did that, you'd have to buy a new stereo, a better one, to make up for it, and that'd just mean I won twice." 

I hit play again, and he looked for a moment like he was going to do what he'd said, and then just sighed in frustration, like I was an annoying little sister, before deciding to ignore me as he went over to Stefan and left me to dance away on my own. "You were supposed to watch her."

Phase 2 complete. All of this, the song, the boastful dancing - they were meant to dampen Klaus's rage. We were putting all the blame on me and at the same time making him think it was me just playing one of my games with him. I was less of a threat if he believed it. Phase 2 was laying the groundwork for that.

Phase 3 was Stefan showing how cumbersome him being compelled by Klaus was for Klaus, and it commenced as Stefan answered, "And I did. I watched her use you as bait for Mikael, because . . . what was it you said, Eve?"

 _Risin' up straight to the top . . . Have the guts. Got the glory._ Bouncing past them, I shouted, "The best bait is bait that doesn't know it's bait."

Using that faux-cocky attitude of his, Stefan nodded, "Yeah . . . yeah, that's right . . . And why did you do that again?"

"Because I needed his stake and the right moment to strike."

Looking at Klaus, he said, "She decided to just skip right over you on the ladder, and I let her, because I figured that was the safest way for her to show you she could beat you, since you haven't been able to do anything about him for 1000 years, and her plan seemed solid."

Stefan'd had no idea what my plan was before I did it, but if we didn't want it to look like he'd been sleeping on the job, then he had to know everything I'd planned and make Klaus believe he'd known it. With a low growl, Klaus asked, "I assume I have her to think for my sister making an appearance?"

"Yeah, that was all Eve."

Klaus looked from Stefan to Damon, and Damon, looked like he still had no idea what was happening, but was more than happy to play smug as he said, "Don't look at me. I just wanted you dead. If I'd had my way, you would be."

Turning in my direction, Klaus yelled over the music, "So, I guess this means, you still don't do teams, Little Wolf Killer."

"Maybe I was on Rebekah's team and your team and their team and ran away with the trophy at the end."

Trying to hide his smile, he let his eyes narrow before he yelled, "And my hybrids?!"

"All dead except for one. I had as much fun destroying them as I thought I would."

His smile fell marginally. Stepping in to respond, Stefan said, "They were without a leader, so what else was she supposed to do?"

Klaus looked at him over his shoulder. "I don't know about her, but you should have gotten her away from them."

"Yeah, I didn't think I could do that without getting both of us killed, so I helped her."

Klaus's face dropped as he grew more serious. "You what?"

"You told me - "

"To keep an eye on her and keep her out of trouble . . . protect her if necessary, so she can protect her sister, not - "

"That's what I did."

Despite the song being nearly over, Klaus changed his mind on destroying the stereo, as he sped over to it, picked it up, and threw it against a wall, but it wasn't anywhere near me. Crossing my arms over my chest, I huffed, "You're getting me a new one."

Muttering as he turned away from me to think, he said, "It wasn't even yours. It's theirs."

"So? I told you what the penalty for breaking it would be, and you did it anyway."

Turning back to me, Klaus finally asked, "Where's my family?"

Damon quickly responded to that one, "You wanna say that again?" with just the right amount of surprise, because it was genuine, and Klaus looked over at him.

"Oh you mean, she didn't tell you? I went to get them, but now they're missing."

Stepping forward, Stefan, feigning stupidity said, "Would now be a bad time to tell you that I helped her do that too?"

Actually, it was the other way around. Using what was in that container truck might've been my plan while I was on the road with them, but using it now had been entirely Stefan's idea, not that it'd taken much convincing for me to do it. Getting in Stefan's personal space, Klaus asked, "And why would you do that?"

"She was sneaking off, so I followed her."

Klaus's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Then where are they?"

"I don't know. She moved them when I wasn't looking." That was true. He'd literally turned his back on the coffins, and I moved them a few feet from where they'd been when he last saw them.

"And why did she do that? You weren't supposed to let her know, or she'd find a way around it."

"I haven't said a word."

"What exactly is that you've done while I've been away?" Stefan puffed out a breath, while he looked up and tried to think of everything he'd done while Klaus was away, and he made a show of it, so Klaus would get even more annoyed with him being compelled. It seemed to work, because Klaus snapped, "I mean where it concerns Eve." 

"Oh . . . I was getting a lift with her to school, but Damon put an end to that. I showed her where her classes were, because she was totally lost for the first couple of days, but I also made her life Hell while I did it to keep her from finding out that thing we discussed . . . Uh, when some kids trashed her car, I kept watch to make sure they didn't come back, while she changed the tires, and - "

"Mm." Klaus squinted again as he said, "Didn't think to stop them from doing that in the first place? You just stood there and watched while she dealt with it?" He wasn't concerned about what'd happened to my car. He was searching for a hole in Stefan's story, because he sensed deception.

Stefan met his look head on while he said, "Well you did tell me not to let her know, so I couldn't be obvious about it."

After a few moments of close scrutiny, Klaus rolled his eyes with a sigh before looking at me. "Except you were too obvious in the other direction." Phase 3 looked like it was going well, as Stefan stepped next to Damon to keep him under control. This had now become Stefan's sole job - watching for any signs that his brother was about to do something stupid and keeping him from following through on it. Watching me, Klaus asked, "If you were really using me as bait, then why?"

Phase 4: Total improve. Say whatever was needed to maneuver Klaus into Phase 5.

"Because Rebekah said he never kept the stake on him unless he was close to getting what he wanted."

"And why did you go after him?"

"Why wouldn't I? You should've told me the guy I was describing was him. He was the worst parent, I've ever seen." 

My candor made him relax. With a slight nod as he looked at the bucket of ash, he said, "He was that . . . but why did it have to be you?" His eyes came back to me, and he added, "Was it because you blamed me for taking your father - "

"That didn't enter my mind once . . . Would you rather Mikael was still out there - " 

"No. I would've rather it'd been me that killed him." There was a sadness in his eyes in between blinks that let me know he'd really needed that closure, and then the sadness was gone as he said, "Did you do it for me?"

"No." My shoulders slumped as I said, "Listening to the way he talked to you outside the house that night might've been enough to make me change my mind, because I have issues with bad parents, and your father landed in the indefensible category. I really didn't like the way he called you, ' _Boy_ '." 

There was that blink and you'd miss it sad look again, and I quickly pressed on with my answer. "But I went there planning to do what I did. I just didn't like him. It's as simple as that. He would've turned on us the second he accidentally let you go once again, and that's exactly what he was going to do. He totally telegraphed to you that Damon was behind you without even realizing he was doing it, and it may not have spared you, but it would've given you a chance, and I think that's because chasing you became a part of him. Running from him never became a part of who you were, so I don't know if that makes sense. I just know that both killing you and not killing you would've made him more dangerous. Especially to vampires because he was a scumbag who fed on his own kind. There's something really wrong with that. Like you guys eat us . . . whatever. We're lower on the food chain, so at least that makes sense. He was a cannibal for no other reason than he liked the idea of being the predator's predator. I mean, if you are _the_ apex predator on this planet, then he was some kind of alien that just didn't belong here . . . Plus, he was my monster to kill."

Klaus had started to smile marginally as I rambled until the last sentence. I think the briefly dark look in my eyes said I was being marginally territorial about it, and given his nature, he responded in kind. "I think he was mine before he was yours."

"Maybe, but I didn't have any familial connection to him, so I didn't have any of those emotions tied up in wanting him dead. I just wanted him dead, because it was better for everyone if he was."

"But you took my hybrids as a dig at me, didn't you?"

"Well, you had to believe you were losing everything to make it believable AND I like to think of it as being more like I took your toys away for bad behavior."

"What bad behavior?"

"Uh . . . like 90% of the things you do are bad."

"You killed a couple dozen hybrids to teach me a lesson?"

"Well, that, and it was also kind of hard to stop once I got started. That pack mentality made it impossible." 

"And the rest of my family?" 

Phase 5: Use the leverage we have to make him give us what we want. There would be anger, but it was my job to calm him down. For some reason Stefan thought I could.

"They're my trophy."

He scoffed at that and said, "You're claiming my family as your trophy?"

"Yep. I won them fair and square."

"Well, I think they'd have something to say about that."

"I bet they'd have more to say about being stuck in a coffin for however many years."

"Give me my family back."

My eyebrows rose as I said, "What are they worth to you." 

"I don't - "

I quickly stopped him. "Negotiate? I know. It's not a negotiation. I won them. If you want them back, then it's only fair that there's a price for that. Besides, I already gave you your sister. Where is she?"

His anger went from building to cooling as he said, "Currently indisposed."

"You stabbed her in the heart and stuck her in another coffin, didn't you?" I said it like I already knew the answer and then shook my head in faux-disappointment. "How do I know you're going to take care of the rest of _my_ Original family if you do that to the one member you got back."

"You little - " Trying to reign in his anger, he cut himself off, then growled in frustration before looking off to the side. When his attention came back to me, he was still angry, but worked really hard to control it. He couldn't kill me, or he had no way of getting his family, since technically, I was the only one who knew where they were. "Give me my family back, or I'll take yours, and you'll never see them again."

And there it was, the entire reason there'd been a part of me that'd really quite enjoyed celebrating my victory. He was about to find out how badly I'd beaten him. Sucking the air in through my teeth, I paused before saying, "Good luck with that. The One-Eyed Witch is living with them now."

Nobody really knew her by her real name. I think she'd only told me what it was when we met, because she felt the same connection I did and magically knew nobody really knew my name outside of my parents. She hadn't known why I was kept a secret until Elena told her, but she'd known I was a secret when we met. It was sort of strange now that everyone here only knew her as Imelda. Klaus definitely knew her by the pseudonym she went by. His face took on a calm look, and that was a sure sign of danger. "You're bluffing."

"I don't bluff."

"Nobody knows how to find her."

"Hunters do, and that's part of the problem, isn't it?"

"She never comes out of hiding."

"She did this time."

He was angry, but instead of turning it on me, he turned it on Stefan. "You let the One-Eyed Witch move Into my doppleganger's house?!"

"You didn't tell me to - "

Pointing at me, Klaus yelled, "I told you to keep an eye on her!"

I spoke up at that, because he was getting a little too angry, and he was giving me too much credit. "Actually, it was an accident. I introduced her to a couple of people. They were gullible, and now she won't leave." Klaus threw me a glare over his shoulder, and I said, "Just admit defeat. You're really starting to look like a sore loser." Handing him a folded up piece of paper, I said, "Here's my first demand."

Ripping it out of my hand, he went to tear it up, but stopped when he saw there was writing on the outside of it. _Do not tear. Take a breath. Count to 10. Open. Read. (Promise it's not bad. I just have to let you know I won)._ His eyes flicked to me in another glare, and he scrunched the paper up in his fist for about 5 seconds, which I'm guessing meant he was counting to 10 pretty fast before he finally opened it and started to relax as he read. "Agreed." His eyes came back to me expectantly, and I said, "You can have the big guy." 

Standing taller as he crossed his arms over his chest, he said, "Finn," before sticking his hand out for another piece of paper. I handed it to him, and he immediately read it before trying not to smile. "As you wish." 

I was holding onto Elijah to get the thing I really wanted. I think Klaus liked him the most. "You can have the coffin that isn't Elijah's and opens." 

"Kol." 

Well, now I knew the names to research. Finn and Kol. "I know it was a long time ago, but I'm sorry about Henrick." 

He hesitated before asking, "Did Rebekah - " 

"If she said something about it to anyone, it wasn't to me. Maybe Elena? I only just figured it out . . . Somebody scratched all your names into a cave near here, and - " 

Thinking briefly about it and then sounding whimsical, Klaus said, "Rebekah started them, but I finished it . . . It wasn't more than a few months before we were turned." 

"Maybe that's why there were cave drawings next to them. They told the story of how you became vampires. It said one of your brothers was killed by werewolves. I just wasn't sure which brother it was." 

He ducked his head before nodding to accept my condolences and then held his hand out for another piece of paper. When he read it, he paused before flicking his eyes in Stefan's direction. "When you said you were making her life Hell to keep her from finding out, what exactly did you mean?" And there was the sometimes older brother Klaus sneaking through. Stefan shrugged, like he didn't have a care in the world, and Klaus rolled his eyes before looking at me. "I could compel him to behave?" 

Nope. I wanted that compulsion gone full-stop. It may not be because Stefan was mean to me and made school a lot harder than it already was, which was true by the way, but Klaus didn't have to know that I could live with that. I just didn't like Stefan being compelled. It made him a spy in our midst, and that wasn't good for him or us. Everything that'd been said and done had been leading to this moment. Klaus didn't think I'd really meant anything by what I'd done, because I'd been playing a game to see if I could beat him. He didn't think Stefan was a threat, because he didn't think Stefan could feel anything yet. He did think Stefan being compelled was starting to be troublesome, which was an annoyance he could do without. He should undo the compulsion with just the right amount of gentle prodding. "I could use Elijah as my new piano teacher." 

Exhaling a laugh, as he looked down at the piece of paper, Klaus shook his head and eventually said, "Fine . . . you have my word." I handed him the final piece of paper, and he read it before saying, "Is this supposed to be a joke?" 

No. I'd talk Elena into giving him a bag of her blood if it meant I could drop that coffin in the ocean. I had a bad feeling about that coffin. "Is that a no?" He gave me a look that said it was indeed a 'no,' and I said, "Is it all right if I hold onto that one for a while?" 

He gave me a thoughtful look before glancing at the brothers. He seemed to know pretty quickly that they had no idea what I was talking about even though it was fairly obvious that Damon was already thinking of ways to use this coffin, because it was clear I wanted it for a reason . . . I think maybe my offer from a few nights ago might make him reconsider killing Klaus for a short while, but he was impatient and impulsive, and if he truly believed it was better for me if Klaus was dead, then he'd do anything to make sure Klaus was dead, so I couldn't tell him what I thought might be in it. It was strange, but I think Elena might be the only one who could figure it out based on the things I'd already told her, which of course meant I didn't want her knowing about it at all - more for her own protection than anything. The question was, how did I keep Damon from talking to her about it, or her from talking about it with Damon. 

I was distracted from my thoughts when Klaus, pointed the folded piece of paper in my direction, as he turned to leave and said, "I'll consider it . . . but we need to have a chat . . . another time, perhaps. I'll send you an address where you can have the others delivered." Flicking another glance at Damon and Stefan as he passed them, he added with a smirk, "Gentleman . . . it's been a pleasure." 

And half a minute later, he was gone. As soon as he was, and I was sure he was gone far enough not to hear, I doubled over to rest my hands on my knees and exhaled a sharp breath to relieve some of the stress I felt. That might be why I didn't see it coming when Damon turned around and suckerpunched Stefan. I looked over my shoulder at them as Stefan landed hard on the ground and Damon angrily said, "That's the plan you couldn't tell me? And how long has your humanity been back, you dick?" How he finally figured out Stefan's humanity was back for the most part, I don't know, but I'm guessing it was a brother thing I wouldn't understand. 


	45. Trying to Stop the Unstoppable

Turning to look at me from the passenger seat, Stefan considered the ramification of his words before finally just deciding to say, "You know, I'm a little surprised. I was expecting there to only be three coffins back there."

Why? Was it because he'd been expecting me to secret it away when he wasn't looking? I guess it was only fair that he'd think that. Before we got there, I'd thought the same thing about him. Why hadn't he been sure if he should say that to me? Did he think that him bringing it up would suddenly give me an idea I hadn't already had? Maybe he hadn't wanted to insinuate that I was the kind of person who would do such a thing. That was laughable, because of course I was. I just had no idea what to do with that stupid coffin, and that is why I hadn't moved it. 

My idea when we took it had been simple - throw it in the ocean in the event that what I thought was in there was actually in there. Klaus said 'no,' to that idea, and I guess I should probably respect that. The next best option I had was to hand it back over to him once Stefan was free of his compulsion. Until then, it was a good insurance policy to have if we wanted to make sure Klaus followed through on the promises he'd made. Once he did what he said he was going to do, the fourth coffin would be of no further use to me. It'd simply turn into a casket-sized millstone around my neck, because the only thing that could be done with it was to hide it so well that nobody would ever find it. 

Klaus could do that better than me, so as soon as I was sure that's what he'd do if it couldn't be destroyed and too dangerous to him to be discarded, then he should definitely take on the responsibility for it. I didn't want to always be thinking about whether it'd been stolen by someone else when I wasn't there. I didn't want my life to revolve around a coffin. The problem was what was I supposed to do with it until I gave it back? I knew two vampires who would be more than happy to crack it open and see what was inside.

Leaving it where it was seemed like the best option for now. Besides, it's not like the logistics involved in the stealing of a coffin would be very easy for me to do on my own. I couldn't just ask Jeremy or Matt to help me move it, because none of these people could keep a secret. I couldn't just pay some moving men to get it, because how would I explain having a coffin hidden down in the basement of an abandoned house. I guess it was almost Halloween, so I could've used that as an excuse, but all they would've been able to do was carry it from the house to a moving van, and then I would've had to take it from there, because I didn't want any witnesses knowing where the coffin's destination was. 

No matter how much someone was paid to keep quiet, something told me the conversation of moving a coffin from an abandoned house to a crypt in an abandoned cemetery might be a good topic to discuss at a bar or maybe even the police station, where anyone could overhear it. That meant that even if I had help getting it to the van I'd have transport it on my own. Then I'd have to get it out of the van, drag it from there to the crypt, and then set all the anti-witch, anti-vampire, and anti-human booby traps I could to make sure the place was secure when I left. I had most definitely thought about doing all of that, but it took time to pull something like that off, and I hadn't had much time before Tyler stopped by with the address of where we were supposed to take the Original Vampires.

I was also doing everything I could to keep the importance of that coffin quiet. Right now, we were all on the same page about doing whatever it took to get Stefan uncompelled, so the fourth coffin was relatively safe where it was. If I took it before Stefan was free of Klaus, then it'd pretty much confirm in unspoken words that I thought that whatever was in it would kill Klaus, since they all knew my stance on that. Was there a chance that the coffin might be stolen by Damon, while Stefan and I took these other three back to Klaus, or that Stefan would steal it as soon as he was free? Yeah, but until one of us made a move, we were all on the same team. 

If I got to it first, then it would be to give it back to Klaus, and the two of them would be annoyed that I'd squandered an opportunity to use it against Klaus. If Damon took it, he'd be mindful of the fact that Klaus would most likely hold me responsible for the coffin disappearing, so he'd want it open if it meant killing Klaus to protect me. He'd also be more likely to give it back to Klaus if opening it took too long. I didn't know what Stefan would do if he got to it first. He was angry, and Klaus had taken the most from him, so he might go into an all out war with Klaus over it, and in war, there was always collateral damage. 

It could become a race between Stefan I to get back to the fourth coffin, but no matter how fast I drove, I wouldn't beat Stefan there. I didn't know how far a vampire could run at top speed - if they were like cheetahs or humans - I'm pretty sure humans were the only animals that could run long distances at a sustained speed, and vampires were at one time humans, so knowing my luck, he'd just vampire sprint there, or he'd call Damon and tell Damon he was free, so Damon could snatch it. While I should want to keep that from happening, I mostly convinced myself that I should start getting used to the idea that I was going to have to react to a missing coffin than think I was being proactive in dealing with it only to find that I'd failed when I got there and the coffin was missing.

Of course, I was going to check in case they hadn't gone after it at all, but I wasn't going to get bent out of shape if they did steal it. It seemed almost inevitable at this point. I needed to plan on how to impede their progress in opening it or protect people who got caught in the crossfire with Klaus. That seemed to be a more valuable use of my mental capacity and time - or not. Maybe I should just vervain Stefan, go back there, somehow get it from the basement to the back of the truck, and hand it over to Klaus with the other 3 coffins. How the hell was I supposed to do any of that? I'd have to go get a dolly of some kind to even attempt it, and even then it'd be difficult, possibly impossible for me to do in the time I had before Stefan woke up from his nap. 

I flipped the turn signal on and prepared to turn left as I said, "I'm fine with where it is for now."

"Damon has a theory."

"I'm sure he does."

He waited until we turned, before saying, "He thinks that whatever is in that fourth coffin will kill Klaus, and that's why you won't say what's in it." 

Well, the last thing I was going to do was confirm or deny that. "Well, it is spelled shut, so it's not like I know for sure what's in there."

"That doesn't mean you don't have a good idea of what's in it. You do seem to have a habit of gathering information from everyone, like some kind of intel magpie, and then holding onto all of it for yourself."

I'm fairly certain that's the first time I'd ever been called a magpie. I glanced at Stefan over my shoulder. "Why does it matter? When I give it back to him, then - "

He told me to go right at the next stop sign before saying, "Eve, you can't just give back the only piece of leverage we have on him."

"I don't want to have a war with Klaus. Innocent people are always collateral damage in wars."

"Eve, he needs to pay for what he's done."

Turning right, I tried, "And what about the people close to you that he hurts in retaliation for what you do?"

"What, you mean Damon? That's not - "

"Going to happen? Yeah, you don't that, and I was actually talking about Elena this time."

"She's safe . . . Imelda will see to that."

"There's more than one way to hurt her. What about the people around her? What if she loses Caroline or Bonnie or anyone else that she has left? Are you prepared - "

"You're damn right I am. If it means - "

Giving him a pointed look, I cut him off by saying, "And maybe that's why I won't have Klaus undo his compulsion. Maybe I'll tell him I've changed my mind and want a pony to go with the bouncy castle, TV and X-Box."

He leaned closer with a challenging glare. "You wouldn't."

"If it's better for everyone not involved, then I might."

He studied me for a few seconds before finally sitting back in his seat with a frustrated sigh. Looking out the passenger side window, he grumbled, "Yeah, well if you think I'm unbearable now, just wait and see how I am if you do." There was an awkward silence for at least a minute before he muttered, "First thing I'll do is kill your pony."

He would _not_ kill my imaginary pony. "You do that, and I'll kill you."

Focusing his attention outside the window, Stefan shook his head. "Not with Damon - "

"Nope. If you cross that line, then you are done."

It was almost like he suddenly realized what we were talking about, because his attention rapidly came back to me, so he could see how serious I was being. "That's your line?" I shrugged a shoulder, and he quickly said, "All the things you've seen me do, and you'd - "

"Put you down in an instant if you killed my pony."

He opened his mouth to respond, and then realized he didn't have anything to say to that, so he still looked a little dumbfounded as he sat back to face the front. A second later, he chuckled before looking back over in my direction. "How serious are you being?"

Honestly? "I'm not really sure."

"On like a scale of 1 to 10, how much of a line would that actually be for you?"

If Stefan killed my imaginary pony, I'd be sorely tempted, but there was a chance Damon could talk me out of it if he anticipated what I was going to do before I did it. "An 8?" 

He breathed out another laugh before shaking his head and looking back out the side window. A minute later, he asked, "What would that have been before you met my brother?"

"What do you mean?"

Giving me a side glance, he finally said, "I mean if that's your line now, what would your line have been before you met him?"

No, Stefan, Damon is not the reason why my line in the sand moves depending on the vampire and maybe even disappears for others. "0 out of 10 for the people my mother killed."

Looking a little more sober, as he remembered who my Mom was, Stefan said, "You seriously had no issues with it when she killed people?" 

"I didn't say that. I said there is no line she could have crossed that would make me kill her."

Slowly nodding in understanding, Stefan said, "So you did have issues with her killing people?"

"I had issues when she snapped and killed random people, because I couldn't stop her from doing it, but that was more about me than her, and I didn't have issues with it when she went hunting, because I knew what she was looking for when she did hunt."

"So, Damon - "

"Is a 0 out of 10."

"Do you have any idea how many people - "

"Yep. And I know how many people he's killed since I've met him. 4. Not long after I met him, I gave him the woman who owned the farmhouse where the tomb vampires took you knowing he'd have to kill her to get in the house. It didn't bother me. I guess it still doesn't. I still think it might have been a mercy killing, and I didn't kill her. He did, but he seems pretty sure that I shouldn't have just handed her over to him like that, or at least not the way I did without a second thought. Then there's when he killed Jeremy, and he killed the 2 people Rebekah compelled to drag me out of the bar in Chicago. I think of them as mercy killings too. He was seriously tempted to kill someone the night Rose died, but that was before he realized that I'd disappeared, and then he spent the night looking for me. He's also been tempted during a couple of our game nights, but he hasn't."

"And other vampires? What's your line on them?"

That was a little harder to explain. "Honestly?" I glanced at him, and he nodded, so I thought about it. "I've grown pretty calloused over the years. It used to be a 10 out of 10 when I found dead victims, but that's when I was 12 or 13 and before I got used to seeing the bodies. Plus, it was before Mom turned. Now it's 0 out of 10 for the victims I come across after they've been killed. Again, I didn't kill them, and I can use them to find what did, so I can stop it from happening to someone else, but when I kill those vampires, it's more about the victims of the future rather than the victims that are already dead, because there's nothing I can do for the dead ones."

Voice devoid of emotion, as he pointed me down another side street, Stefan said, "And the victims of the future . . . if they become the present, then - "

Tired of beating around the bush, I said, "Yes, if I didn't know Damon, I would have killed you by now." 

I glanced at him over my shoulder, and he diverted his gaze out the window. "You should've done it . . . you had so many opportunities you didn't take because of my brother, and now you're doing the same thing with Klaus and for the same reason."

I didn't like that sentiment all that much. He wouldn't do anything to Damon, but that didn't mean he wouldn't think of ways he could use Damon to get me to agree to whatever it was he wanted to do about anything, not just Klaus. He wasn't stable right now. He was okay one second and weird the next. Who knew what was running through his mind in any given moment. "The first couple of days it was about Damon, but if you want to know why you're sitting here right now, it's because of Klaus." His eyes flicked in my direction, and I said, "There's only so much I can take, whether it's for Damon or not, and you used that up in about 60 hours, but I knew Klaus wouldn't allow me to kill you, and I needed to stay alive if I was going to find a permanent solution to him." 

Turning back to me, he quickly exclaimed, "Then you know what needs to be done!"

"Yeah, but I haven't found a way to do it without killing him."

"You can't seriously believe Isobel - "

"I can, and I do. I also know there are better ways of going about this than to steal his coffin and yell 'nana nana boo boo, you can't catch me' at him, because that's essentially what this is going to turn into . . . child."

"Are you kidding me? You asked for a freaking bouncy castle. How is that not squandering the best chance we've had at getting him out of town?"

"It served the larger purpose of getting you out from under his compulsion."

"Yeah, and the fourth coffin is still in our possession, so we can use that as leverage, the same way you're using it now to make sure he gives into your other demands without really saying it. If the other three coffins are the carrot, it seems to me that the fourth coffin is the stick, and for it to be the stick, it has to be something that can hurt him."

Sighing, I focused on the road, while biting my tongue, so I didn't give too much away, even though I knew my non-response was an answer in and of itself, which was apparent in the way Stefan relaxed before sitting back in his seat. "Any idea how to get it open?" I threw him a look for trying his luck, and he looked out the side window again with a slight nod. "What'd you ask him for in return for that one?" I gave him another similar look to the one I'd just given him. There's no way I was going to tell him I wanted that thing dropped in the middle of the ocean. It'd only confirm what he and Damon already suspected, and I only had another 5 minute to try and talk him out of whatever he was thinking of doing.


	46. Between A Rock and A Hard Place

Climbing out of the truck, I still had no idea what Stefan was going to do, but I might as well sell this like all was well in world and would remain that way for the foreseeable future. Tossing Klaus the keys to the rental van, I waited until he caught them before smiling sweetly and saying, "3 Originals, as promised." Not paying much heed to the greeting, Klaus went around to the back of the van to lift the door, and as Stefan moved to the front of the van, I shared a look with him. His expression was unreadable. Mine pretty much told him one last time to behave. 

I quickly returned to an easy going facade when I heard Klaus jump down at the back. He waved some people who were standing on the porch over, and they started taking the coffins into a mansion. Either he had no problem with anyone knowing his family's whereabouts, or the people were from out of town, and he'd compelled them to help him move and renovate. They'd forget all about this job if they were compelled. Maybe he was simply going to kill them when they were done, or what he was paying them would prevent them from saying anything about what they saw or heard here. It could easily be any one of the above with him. 

I'm guessing that getting more hybrids would be on his agenda soon, but first he was setting up a place to live here in Mystic Falls and getting his family back. Then, he might be further distracted if Stefan decided to take that fourth casket. Eventually, he was going to want more of Elena's blood, and Elena wasn't with Imelda all the time. That was a problem for another day. Today's problem was getting Stefan uncompelled. Although I was seriously tempted not to go through with that, because I had no idea what he was going to do with his freedom, it seemed like helping him was the right thing to do. I suppose I was just hoping for the best and had to start planning for the worst at this point.

I watched as Klaus walked around the other side of the van to get to Stefan. "You understand this isn't for you? You haven't earned it."

I'd lied by omission to him too, but I guess maybe there were two differences between Stefan doing it and me doing it. One, was the more obvious reason that Elena was my sister, and that gave me something of a free pass, whereas she was just Stefan's girlfriend, so he didn't get that same pass in Klaus's book. The second, was that Klaus had really considered Stefan a friend, and that betrayal was felt more keenly by Klaus than a betrayal by me would've been. Stefan silently nodded in response to Klaus with a look that said he knew that, and maybe he'd show he was contrite if he felt it, but he couldn't, because he didn't feel anything. It was a nice little piece of acting by him. 

A moment later, and with a sigh, Klaus placed his hand on Stefan's shoulder, and looked him in the eyes, while saying, "You no longer have to do as I say." 

With a short breath of relief, Stefan took a step back, and glanced at me. His hand went into his pocket, and a moment later he was tossing me a small object. "I don't know what that is, but I found it on the body of that hunter I killed. You might want to look into it." 

I just took my eyes off of him for as long as it took for me to catch whatever he'd thrown, and he used the opportunity to vampire sprint his ass right out of there. He was going to get that coffin, wasn't he? Awesome. I threw an annoyed look at Klaus, and he chuckled. "Well, that's gratitude for you." Nodding towards my closed hand, he asked, "What is it?"

"It's, uh," Looking at it again, I said, "A dice cube, but it's not like one I've ever seen." I guess if Stefan was compelled to keep an eye on me without me knowing, it meant he couldn't tell me about it if he thought it might be dangerous, or if he thought me knowing about it would lead me in a direction of trouble? If this was problematic, then I'd rather know about it than not. Score 1 for him having his freedom back even if he was most likely using it to score a point for not having it back by keeping me preoccupied, while he stole Klaus's coffin. "I'm guessing it's been charmed in some way. There are little runes on it instead of dots." Turning it over in my hand, I added, "Something tells me if I roll this die, I might not like what happens if it lands on at least half the sides . . . that's the way it works with magic, doesn't it? For every good thing, there has to be a bad thing to balance it out?" When I looked up at him, Klaus had stepped closer and was staring at the cube, but his jaw was clenched. My eyes narrowed as I said, "You know what this is, don't you?"

Throwing me a brief smile, he said, "Why don't you ask your One-eyed witch what it is?"

"Well, who do you think sent the hunter in the first place?" 

His eyebrows rose. "Ah, and I take it she doesn't know her hunter is dead, but if you show up with that, she will."

Yep. I certainly didn't want to be the one to tell her. As long as she thought the hunter was alive, she wouldn't call anymore hunters. Looking back down at the dice cube, I said, "Is he dead?" My eyes shot up to Klaus as I briefly lifted the cube in his direction and said, "This doesn't work like my ring, does it? Like if you roll 1 rune, then you get come back. You roll a side with 6 runes, you don't?" I went back to looking at the cube and muttered, "Maybe a 2 gives me extra strength, or a 3 gives me speed, something like that?"

A slow smile spread across his face. "So this is how that mind of _yours_ connects things." 

I shrugged before looking back down at the object. "Maybe . . . Can this be destroyed?"

He seemed to relax as he became more inquisitive. "Why would you destroy it?"

Why lie? "I don't like it."

Sounding as though he wanted me to use my brain more, he said, "What's not to like? You don't even know what it is. You may find it quite useful."

"Well, my ring has a single purpose, but this seems to have multiple purposes, and some of those might be sinister, not to me, but people around me . . . good luck for me. Bad luck for them? I'm guessing it only works for humans . . . and I'm not entirely sure that its previous owner isn't going to come looking for it if he's not really dead . . . I don't want it."

"You have nothing to fear."

My eyes darted up to Klaus. "You think I'm making a decision based on emotion, but I'm not. I don't fear this object, and I don't fear this hunter, or anyone who knows what this thing is and may coming looking for it, but if he's only temporarily dead, and I have this, it does make him more dangerous than he already was, because it's no longer just that he wants to kill the vampires and hybrids in town along with any sympathizers he's seen. It's more personal if I have something he believes is his, and that will make him more relentless in his efforts to kill me until he gets it back. I'm not looking to go to war over an inanimate object . . . the people in my life, even if they're vampires? Yeah, I'd fight for them, but not this thing unless I knew for sure that it was worse for the world if he got it back."

Continuing to observe me, he offered, "I think it's better in your hands." Hm. Another small clue. He wasn't very forthcoming though. Picking up on something I'd said, his eyes narrowed as he asked, "Do you think he was sent for you?"

He didn't care if the guy had been. He was looking for ways he could use the information to his advantage and at the same time trying to make it look like that's not what he was doing. How should I respond to that? "I think Imelda is a bigot, and that she may have wanted me to move in with her, so I wouldn't be branded a sympathizer, but she also knows the history I have with vampires because of my Mom, so she brought in someone who would be able to deal with me if I got in the way . . . Stefan killed him, so I don't know how good he was. Maybe his abilities were all tied up in the luck he got from this." 

There. That should answer his real question. He was smart enough to know Imelda was the One-Eyed Witch without having to ask, and that meant I was on at least a first name basis with her, and names were an important source of power in some magical circles, so that she trusted me enough to know it said a lot without having to say much. What I'd said also indicated that there was a part of Imelda that did like me if she wanted to protect me from the hunter, but not enough to overrule her hatred of vampires. He wasn't going to be able to use me to get her out of Elena's house, and she was strong enough in her convictions not to let him anywhere near Elena. 

While he absorbed that, I went back to studying the item and said, "There's taking a chance on something and then there's putting all your faith in chance. Someone who used this all the time would have to be a risk taker, but that's not who this guy was. He staked out the boarding house for a few days before he followed us to the Lockwood mansion. He was mindful of the perimeter I'd set up. That tells me he was cautious. If this isn't intended for constant use, it's at least intended as a hail mary, something to be used as a last resort when nothing else will work, and that tells me it's not safe to use on a regular basis, which means there is powerful magic surrounding this, and it's probably dark magic . . . having weapons that are charmed to add a little extra kick when you use them is one thing. This is entirely different."

"You don't feel a pull to use it?"

I slowly shook my head before looking up at him. He seemed unsure of my response, and that told me all I needed to know about this cursed object. Anything that compelled you to use it wasn't good, especially if it was an inanimate object. Sticking my hand into one of my jacket pockets, I pulled out a little medicine bag I'd made for me. I might be holding onto Elijah's pin in case one of my supernatural friends or sister needed it, but that only did so much to protect me from Imelda and whatever hunters she sent my way with magical extras. "I made this. It protects me from magic." He went to to reach for it, and I pulled it away from him, while saying, "It's sort of doing a job right now, or I'd let you see it."

Seeming to be amused by that, he twirled his finger to indicate he wanted me to spin it, so he could see the markings on the back. I did, and his eyes narrowed as examined it. "If that's what I think it is, then I haven't seen one in a very long time. How did you - "

"I found it in one of my Mom's research books. I could show it to you."

Grinning, like he knew something I didn't, he said, "That's quite all right."

"It was really old. Did you write it?"

His smile grew as he said, "I did not, but I know who did."

There were no names on it. It was really more of a handwritten journal than a research book. "Who?"

"I'm sure you'll find it if you look hard enough." Great. Something else to occupy my mind on top of figuring out what to do about the hunter, this magic cube, Imelda, the Original Witch, school, and Stefan. Don't get me wrong. I'd been looking all summer for a purpose, and I was starting to get a clearer picture of what that was, but it was a lot of things to be juggling at once, and that meant one of them might get dropped. I couldn't really afford for that to happen on any of the important ones.

My eyes flicked back down to the magical die lying in the palm of my hand. "You're not going to tell me what this is, are you?"

"I have no doubts that you'll have it figured out in no time without my help."

"Mm." I stuck the cube and the medicine bag in my pocket and said, "You sound like Aunt Kat."

It took him a few moments to piece together who I was talking about. "Katerina? I am nothing like that traitorous - Did you just call her Aunt?"

I did enjoy catching him by surprise. It felt like an accomplishment simply because nothing should catch him by surprise anymore. "Yeah, she didn't exactly like being called the worst great-grandmother on the planet, so she got my Mom to have me start calling her Aunt. Sometimes the habit is hard to break."

"You kept your relationship with her hidden."

"Yep."

Sounding annoyed, Klaus said, "Until now. Why?"

"You wouldn't do me a solid out of the goodness of your heart and just forget about her, would you? I don't like waiting for her to ask for something in return for the things she sometimes does for me, because I know for sure if she has to ask, it's not going to be something I want to do."

And he might be annoyed, but he also didn't like the idea of me owing her any more than I did. "And why do you owe her?"

"Well, she did tell you my Dad took me out of town and helped you use Jenna in my place for the ritual . . . I have no idea why, but she must be saving it up for something big, and I do not want to owe her for that."

Rolling his eyes he answered, "I haven't gone looking for her at any point since I let her deliver the cure to Stefan's insufferable brother."

"I know. You've been all about the hybrids, but she has a tendency to think she's the center of the universe, so she doesn't need to know that you don't care if you ever see her again, just that I did something for her."

Looking away from me, he went back to looking annoyed. "Fine. I will maintain the status quo by continuing not to look for her, but if I see her again, I will kill her."

"Yeah, good luck with that. She has a way of getting out of almost anything. I almost killed her once. I'd say that's the closest she's come to it in a while, and yet she's still out there." 

Relaxing when he looked back at me, he asked, "And was this before or after the Sun and Moon Ritual?"

"Before . . . See, she staked me and left me for dead, knowing somehow that I wouldn't die, and then she went after my dad. I tried to kill her a few weeks later . . . We were even until she told you I was out of town with Dad. Now we're uneven in the opposite direction. She also told Damon we were in Chicago, and I thought me telling her that she should get out of town because there was a hunter here would pay her back for one of those things, but then she went and had Stefan kill the hunter, so I'm lagging behind again."

"None of those things are worthy of you owing her anything." 

"She won't see it that way."

"Why don't you?"

"I don't know how to explain it. I just don't want to be indebted to her or to get used to her doing things like that for me, because the next time I see her, she could very well stake me again. It's a complicated relationship . . . She's family and yet not. I don't really understand it at all."

Finding something he could relate to in all of that, he nodded and said, "Complicated family, I understand . . . You never did say what happened to your father, by the way."

He was forever poking that wound to try and find the answer. It was almost like if he knew the secret behind my Dad's death, he'd understand my motivations or actions better. Now that he knew Elena was alive, there was no reason not to tell him anymore. "Bonnie tied his life force to Elena, so when Elena died, his life force went to her, and he died instead."

His eyebrows arched as he processed that. "I killed Elena in the ritual, so . . . " I shrugged a shoulder in response. Yeah, that's pretty much why I'd put the blame for Dad's death on him. "And if he died to bring her back, that's why you never told me how he died. We haven't actually spoken yet about - "

"Don't even start on me with that whole 'You deceived me,' thing you having going on with Stefan. How forthcoming with me were you about what was in that container truck that followed us around all the time?"

His eyes narrowed into a slight glare as he considered it, but a second later his shoulders dropped. "Fair enough." Turning, and changing the subject all together, he gestured towards the front door. "Come on. I want to show you the house."

Ugh, being around him was really stressful. I could only do it and keep up the act that I was fine being around him for short periods of time, and even then I needed a bit of a break in between visits. Besides, I had a coffin I needed to check on sooner rather than later. "I don't know. I have people waiting for me at home. Wouldn't want them sending a search party with pitchforks and torches." 

Unfazed, he turned toward his house saying, "I'm sure they won't notice you being gone another 20 minutes."

That coffin would definitely be gone by the time I was done here. I forced myself to accept that, because it wasn't safe for me to tip Klaus off on it before I got away from him. Might as well play along for now. We walked through the front door, and he seemed to want to know what my thoughts were, so the first thing I said as I looked around at the big empty space was, "How are you going to fill it?"

"I'll leave that to an interior decorator."

"Yeah, but that's for style . . . I would've thought living on the run for 1000 years would mean you'd have to be ready to drop everything and go at a moment's notice. Do you really have that many things that mean something to you that you can put around the place?"

Looking around, he muttered, "No, I suppose not . . . You think it's too big."

"Just a tad. Even for 5 vampires."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you live in a boarding house? Sure, the floor space of this one is bigger, but - "

With a look, I stopped him by saying, "Tell me, you're not living here because it has more square feet than the boarding house."

Rocking back on his heels as he stuck his hands in his pockets and looked around, he quietly said, "There's nothing wrong with me wanting to live in the bigger, better, house."

"Sure there is." He looked down at me, and I said, "It's an unnecessary taunt."

"It's showing that I'm the better man."

"It's a pissing contest that doesn't need to start."

Chuckling as he went left to show me into another room, he said, "It's one that's already started. You just haven't taken note of it yet."

"Yeah, no, I get that there is one, but it's one you started, so instead of escalating it, just leave it be now that things are square."

Looking down at me over his shoulder, he asked, "And are they square?"

I held my breath, while I thought about that one. For sure, I knew they weren't with Damon or Stefan. Looking up at him, I meekly tried, "They are with me?"

"So, you're saying that what you did to my hybrids equates to what I did to your parents?" 

"No. You didn't care about your hybrids. Bet you didn't even know all their names, since you essentially wanted them as canon fodder. As long as Elena's alive, you know you can get more, or you'd be a lot more upset they're gone than you seem to be."

"Then we're not square."

I mulled it over as I considered what exactly, I should tell him. "We are. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out the blame for my Dad's death, and I don't think it's really on you. Sometimes I blame Elena too even though I know it's just as unfair. A lot of the time, I blame Bonnie, and I think that's probably right considering the role she played in it, but the more distance I get from it, the more I realize that I blame Dad the most, because it was his idea, and it was his choice to do it, and at the same time, I understand why he did it and don't want to take away from something heroic he did for one of his children even if that child wasn't me . . . I guess it's the grieving process? I don't really know." 

I looked up at him to see if I was right, and he was watching me, but didn't give any indication of whether he thought I was right or not. Looking away from him, I sighed. "Anyway, with Mom . . . you are directly responsible for her death, but magic in this town went haywire a few weeks ago. The divide between the living and the dead monster realm broke down for a day, so she made a come back and told me I had protect you, and if she can forgive you, then I can, so that's what I've done."

After hesitating a brief moment, he finally dipped his head to let me know he'd consider the notion that I forgave him before saying, "So what she said to you is why you spared my life." I nodded even though it'd been a statement more than a question. "Why did she tell you to protect me?"

"I can't tell you that."

He thought it over and decided to leave it for now. "That wouldn't happen to be why you want to drop my fourth coffin in the ocean, would it?"

"Yes." 

I think the bluntness of my answer gave him pause. "Do you know what's in it?"

"I think the reason there was a ghost outbreak in town has something to do with it . . . One soul, in particular, had a place to go when it got out, didn't it?" He went rigid in what I would call momentary fear before he swallowed it back down, and I added, "I'd suggest getting rid of it rather than letting it hang around for someone to open, because when there is a will, there is a way, and there's a pretty strong will out there to kill you, but if you just can't bring yourself to part with it, then prepare to see her again, and know that no matter what she says, she is not on your side . . . she's manipulative and conniving, and she has had 1000 years to come up with a plan on what to do about her monster-children."

"Children?"

There was that look of sadness again. He really could do sad, puppy dog eyes just about as well anyone I'd ever seen. "Yeah, it won't just be you. It'll be all of you."

"How do you know all of this?"

"She's working with Imelda, and I've pieced it together from conversations I've had with her and information I had about you." Rumors of 3, 4, or 5 Original Vampires, that's what I'd heard from my Mom for I don't know how long. Damon said there were 5 coffins in the lock up in Chicago. I didn't think anything of it until Imelda said she couldn't find the Original Witch after the ghost mishap, but Klaus was never in one of those coffins, so why were there 5? There was one too many, because that'd make 6 Original Vampires. 

I'd hit a bit of a hitch in my theory when I first saw there were 5 children's names written on that cave wall, but then I figured out one of the 5 kids had been killed by a werewolf from the cave drawings, and my theory was back. Klaus's Mom's soul may have moved on, but her body had been preserved in a sort of stasis, the way my ring did with my body if I died. When the ring did that, my body had to wait until my spirit returned for me to come back. I assume it was the same with The Original Witch; hence the reason for the ghost jail break. I was pretty sure she'd wake up the second that coffin opened. 

With a sharp in-take of air, Klaus nodded before looking away from me. Running a hand down his face, while he quickly tried to find a solution to a problem he was only just now starting to realize he had, he looked a little panicked, but tried to hide it as he said, "She's the reason the One-Eyed Witch moved into the doppleganger's house."

"Yep." 

Turning his attention back on me, he said, "If they are working together, it may be contrary to what your mother told you to do, but you're still using that to your advantage, while you can."

"For now." 

His eyes flitted back and forth in thought as he looked down in thought. "And the Bennet witch? Is she still without her powers?"

"Imelda sent her to talk to her mother, so she could figure out how to get her powers back."

Flicking a gaze in my direction, he said, "Did it work?"

"I don't know. We aren't exactly close."

A thought struck him, but he didn't fill me in on what it was. Instead, he looked around the room, like he was seeing it for the first time and said, "I was thinking about turning this into a reading room."

"It's awfully bright, isn't it?"

His shoulders dropped, as he shook his head. "You're not going to like anything about this house, are you?"

"I prefer dark and cozy . . . but it's not about what I want. It's about what you want, not what you want to show off, but what makes you feel comfortable in your down time, and if this does, then more power to you." Taking a look out of the window, I added, "I like the grounds though . . . they're quite nice."

"Eve?"

It got my attention. "Hm?"

"I'll take my coffin back . . . I think I know what to do with it." 

Brilliant. Too bad it was probably already gone. "Then you've met the price I have on it. I'll bring it tomorrow."


	47. Uneasy Confidants

"Hey." 

I barely looked up at Elena as my attention returned to the tiny object in my hand. "Hey."

Sitting next to me on the blanket, she had a look at what held my interest and asked what you'd expect. "What's that?"

"I don't know." Careful to place the dice cube on the blanket instead of dropping it, so it didn't think I was rolling it, I said, "Stefan found it on that hunter he killed . . . or maybe didn't kill. I don't know if this brought the hunter back or will if it's used again or what is up with this thing, but there's something kind of sinister about it." I glanced over my shoulder at Elena and added, "I think it's supposed to make humans want to use it. I don't know if it's a constant thing or if it's only in times of trouble or what it is, but I don't think any inanimate object should make you feel like you have to use it . . . Do you feel like you have to use it?"

Looking at it, she shook her head. "No."

"What about if you touch it?"

"Are you experimenting on me?"

I shrugged a shoulder. "Well, you're human, but not, like a witch, so I'm guessing that might make it not want you to be its owner. I think it's meant for humans only. I've got my hex bag on me, so it's not affecting me. I just want to test my theory, and it's probably better if I don't do it on myself."

Rolling her eyes, she stuck out her forefinger and poked it before pulling her hand back and shaking her head again. "Nope."

My eyes narrowed as I watched her. She seemed annoyed that I was acting so cautious about an inanimate object, but she didn't really look like she was waiting for an opportunity to run off with it saying, 'My precious.' "Okay. Do you think you could take it for me? I think we should keep it hidden by switching it back and forth between us. Just don't let any humans touch it or let Imelda know you have it. I made a medicine bag to keep it in when you're around her, so it should dim it's power as long as it's in it."

Starting to take me a little more seriously, she asked, "You really think this is a problem?"

"It might be."

"More of a problem than Klaus is right now?"

Except I didn't think Klaus was the problem right now. Stefan was. He took off with that fourth coffin before I could get back to it. I'd known that he was probably going to do that, so that wasn't as much of a surprise as how I found out that he'd taken it. That came in the form of a lovely phone call I'd gotten from Klaus after I'd just left his house and was on my way to check on said coffin.

It would appear the first rule in the Salvatore's playbook was to do something to piss off someone stronger than them and then immediately tell that person they'd done it. Their complete lack of impulse control was astounding sometimes. There was a difference between doing what Stefan had and rubbing a win in Klaus's face by doing a victory dance the way I had, because the victory dance was never intended to be a direct challenge to Klaus. It'd been meant to keep Klaus's temper in check and his attention on my audacious behavior, not what was really important. 

Actually, it would appear that my little act had been more beneficial to me than I'd thought it would be at the time. It had worked so well, that Klaus really believed I was essentially a child and felt the need to give me a lecture on being more careful with a trophy that I was supposed to be responsible for keeping safe. Then he told me that he was relieving me of the duty of getting the trophy back from Stefan. I still had to worry about what happened to the people caught in the middle of their little fight, but somehow, I'd pretty much been let off the hook for now. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

I didn't like being overlooked as unimportant, but my plan had worked - maybe a little too well? I guess I could use that. All of Klaus's attention was on Stefan, because Stefan could be an out right prick when he wanted to be. He was being pretty blatant about it too. I wouldn't be surprised if I heard at some point that Klaus's mansion had gone up in flames in the middle of the night, but Damon was the one looking out for Stefan this time, so to get around him, Stefan would have to be more wily than him, and I don't think he was creative enough to do that. Bet the idea of burning Klaus's mansion down hadn't even occurred to him yet. 

At any rate, Damon was preoccupied with Stefan. Stefan was preoccupied with Klaus, and Klaus was preoccupied with both of them, so it pretty much left me on my own to do whatever I wanted to do, and what I wanted to do was figure out this magical dice cube and the growing witch problem in this town. "Possibly. It could also be nothing. Maybe it'll help, but I don't think it should be used unless we know for sure that if it is used, it won't have some kind of negative effect. Right now, my theory is that if you roll it, and something good happens for you, something bad happens to someone else around you."

Paying more attention the cube, Elena's asked, "What do you mean?"

"I mean, like let's say, you're a hunter who is fighting a vampire, you lose all your weapons for whatever reason, or you're caught unprepared, and you need a little boost. If you roll the dice, maybe it'll give you extra speed, and take it from the vampire you're fighting, so the vampire slows down, you speed up, and you win." I glanced at the cube and said, "But I don't only fight vampires. I'm also friends with some, which might throw this thing out of whack. What if it takes speed or strength from a vampire I'm friends with instead, someone like Caroline, and it weakens her when she can't afford for it to do that?" My eyes narrowed, as I stared at the mini-cursed object and said, "But that's not what concerns me the most. What if you roll it and get something that does nothing for your speed or strength. What if you roll the wrong thing, and it kills you? Or what if it helps you heal from a life-threatening wound, or you roll it just before you die, and it lands on a side that will bring you back from dying? It might heal you by giving that injury to someone else, or it might take that life from someone else and give it to you. It wouldn't be a vampire or werewolf life - more like a human life for a human life." 

Elena's eyes shot open as she looked up at me. "It could really do all that?"

"Maybe. I don't think it would work like my ring with no strings attached. There's the potential for great reward, but risk is inherent to the roll of any die. If you're playing Monopoly, and roll the wrong thing, you could land in jail or on Boardwalk when your opponent has hotels on it. If you're playing a game where you place bets on what you roll, then the likelihood of losing money is high. A million dollars to a billionaire isn't much. A million dollars to just about anyone else is. If you don't care about the life of yourself or others if it means killing your prey, then the risk won't matter to you anymore than that million dollars does to a billionaire. You'd roll this without giving it a second thought."

Looking at the cube, like she was starting to see it as dangerous, she shook her head. "But I thought you said a witch couldn't kill someone with magic."

While she wasn't looking at me, I took the opportunity to roll my eyes. Why did nobody ever listen to me? Using this wasn't all that different from what Bonnie had done to bring her back. "I also said there were loopholes . . . or maybe whoever made this used _really_ dark magic to make it. If you don't get your magic from nature, you can find ways around its rules."

Exhaling, Elena said, "I could take this to Bonnie and see what she thinks."

Yeah, I didn't trust that witch not tell Elena it was safe to use if she knew I might be using it. "When did she - "

"We didn't think - I mean after what happened, I thought it might be better if you didn't know if - "

I drolly cut her off. "Sure, I get it. Why notify the victim when her attacker is getting out on probation?" She looked worried, and I relaxed. "Look, I get it. You don't want me to try and short-circuit her magic again, but doing what I did wouldn't work twice, because she'd be aware of what I was doing. If that means she's learned not to lose control of her powers to keep it from happening again, then her lesson's been learned, and the world is a safer place."

Elena hesitated before slowly nodding and then bowed her head as she said, "She doesn't have all or even most of her powers back, but she says talking to her Mom is helping. Her Mom lost her magic too. I guess her Mom thinks nature did it as punishment for leaving Bonnie, and deep down, she didn't want the magic anymore, so it was a little of both, and it's the same for Bonnie. Nature didn't like something she did, and maybe deep down, Bonnie doesn't think she deserves her magic either." Flicking me a glance, she added, "The way you said."

She was looking at me, so I fought the urge to roll my eyes that time. "If you take it to her, don't tell her I'm looking into this. I don't want - "

"She wouldn't tell you to use it if she thought - "

"Yeah, well she did kill me, so my trust in her is a little low." 

It was Elena's turn to roll her eyes as she reached for the cube. I quickly stopped her by picking it back up and saying, "Nobody can know about this. I don't have it all figured out yet, but I do know it's powerful, and that means if that hunter isn't dead, he'll want it back. If he is dead, then other people who know about it will come looking for it when they find out he's dead. Imelda can't - "

"I haven't said anything about what Stefan did to that hunter. I know she'll just call more hunters if she knows he's dead." Elena's eyes flicked to the cube, as she amended that. "Or potentially dead."

I hesitated before dropping the cube in her hand, and added, "And I'm sure it's way too late to say it, because none of you can seem to keep your mouths shut, but no matter how weak they are right now, nobody should really know about Bonnie's powers resurfacing."

I pulled a small burlap bag full of those magic-weakening herbs out of my pocket, and Elena cautiously let the cursed die fall into it. No way was I just going to let that thing walk around in someone's pocket where it could easily fall out and wind up in the wrong hands. "Why can't anyone know about Bonnie?"

Placing the bag inside a small key safe, I'd bought, I answered, "I have my reasons, the least of which is that if Klaus knows, it will put her in danger."

She almost bit her tongue to keep from saying what she was thinking, but that lasted all of 2 seconds before she quickly said, "If you know something, you need to tell me."

Handing her the locked key safe, I responded, "I don't _need_ to do anything."

"Eve, you tell me whatever it is right now, or - "

"No."

"Does it have something to do with what Stefan did?" I didn't immediately respond, and her eyes narrowed. "It does, doesn't it?"

With a sigh, I let her see my rolling eyes that time and finally said, "How am I supposed to know you won't help her if I tell you?"

"Eve, what is it?"

"What do you think it is?"

"I'm not playing games with - "

In complete exasperation, I cut her off. "I'm not playing a game! Use your freaking brain, Elena. Why do you think - "

"What I think is that you think she can open that coffin, and you don't want Klaus to know that, but more than that, you don't want Stefan to know, so he won't bring it to her. You know whatever is in it might kill Klaus, and you've already made your opinion on that quite clear."

"Hm." The corner of my mouth ticked up in a slight smirk before I said, "Not bad." 

Her shoulders dropped as she relaxed. "Really?"

Giving her a slight smile of reassurance, I responded, "Yeah . . . Except I would also add that I think the reason nobody can find the stupid casket in the meantime is because Stefan went to Imelda despite my warnings that she would kill any vampire on sight." 

Sitting forward in interest, Elena said, "But I think you were right about that. Just listening to her day in and day out, she seems fine - nice and funny - just someone who has had a hard life and is a little socially awkward, but then she comes out with these comments sometimes that are kind of shocking and show exactly how much hate she really has hidden underneath the person you think you know. So, how did Stefan go to a person like that without her killing him?"

Good question. I'm sure the answer would come in time, but until then, all I had were theories. "I don't know. Maybe he called your house phone and said, 'I've heard about you, and I've got something I think can kill, Klaus. Help me hide it and find a way to open it. Oh, by the way, I'm a vampire, so don't kill me when you see me.'"

"That sounds nothing like Stefan."

I exhaled a brief laugh and said, "I know . . . but I'm guessing something like that went down. He had to arrange the meeting from a distance. Maybe even talking on the phone would open him up to her powers, so he had a human go between, who helped set up their meeting."

"Could she really use her powers on him through the phone?"

I didn't have all the answers. "I don't know. Who knows what spells she's come up with over the years? Maybe a couple of words down the line would make him burst into flames."

Not liking the idea of that, Elena made a face. "So if someone delivered his message for him, do you think it was someone we know?"

"Maybe. It could've been anyone. He could've paid whoever it was to deliver a message."

Thinking through it, Elena asked, "Could he have compelled someone visiting from out of town to do it?"

"Well it isn't exactly something that he'd be above doing right now." Elena nodded, like that's what she'd thought, and I added, "But if he was being smart, then he would've known not to flaunt one of his vampire abilities in her face, so I'm thinking he used more conventional means, like simply asking or just paying someone to do it."

"And why would she help him? If she has a clear idea of what she thinks is right and wrong, then she wouldn't cross that line and help a vampire, would she? Why wouldn't she kill him on sight, or kill him once she got the coffin if she thought what was in it was important?"

That was a little harder to explain, but I suspected that Imelda had made her way into the gray way of living more than she'd wanted me to believe. Her part in bringing the Original Witch back hadn't been a mistake. She'd done it intentionally. I was sure of it, and I don't know why. It was just a feeling at this point, because I was missing a few key pieces of information. 

It had something to do with the questions Klaus had asked me when I went to deliver the rest of his family to him. One of his questions, in particular, made me think that Bonnie was the key to opening that coffin some how. Sure Bonnie had gone to Imelda for help in getting her powers back before Imelda even knew about the Original Witch, but I felt like there was something more to the advice that Imelda had given to her now. "Well, that depends. Did Imelda tell Bonnie to talk to her Mom the first time they met?"

"No. It was in the car on the way here."

Nodding as I picked a dandelion out of the grass, I muttered, "That's what I thought." It pretty much confirmed what I'd already begun to suspect. Looking around us, I started to say, "We should - "

"Wait, that's it?" 

"What's it? We haven't even started training yet. It'll be a little shorter today, but - "

"No, I mean, you can't just ask a question like that and keep what you're thinking to yourself."

"Why?"

"Because it's not what people do."

"Sure it is. I've seen plenty of shows with cops in them to know that during an interview, they don't say - "

"Well, this isn't an interview. I'm not a suspect, and you are definitely not a police officer . . . You can tell me what you're thinking, especially, if it has something to do with people I care about. What does any of this have to do with Bonnie? I know there's more, and you're not - "

I didn't particularly take being badgered very well. Bringing up the same topic until I was worn down over an extended period of time? Sure. Dropping hints and hoping I could verify something I wanted someone to know if they guessed it? Of course. Getting yelled at by someone? Yeah. Being nagged until I relented? Not so much. "Just stop talking!" I threw her a look, and she glared at me. "I don't feel comfortable talking to you about it. I told you about the cursed object. Isn't that enough?"

"No. It's not. Why can't you just - "

"Because that's sort of important, but not really important, and I want to see how you do on the not so important things before I go telling you about important things."

Sitting back, she looked vexed, but calmly said, "You still don't trust me."

"Nope."

Her shoulders dropped as I confirmed her statement. "Why not?"

"For starters, I don't know you."

She wanted to agree with that, but still felt the need to argue, "You've known about me for years."

"Knowing about someone doesn't mean you know them. I don't know Julia Roberts just because I know she is who plays Vivian in _Pretty Woman_." Elena hesitated with an expression that said she couldn't argue that, and I used the time to push forward before she could come up with something else to say. "This is too important to me, and - "

"And what about me? Don't you think Bonnie and Stefan are - "

"Yeah, I do, which is exactly why I can't tell you, because they are on the opposite side of this from me. Stefan is too blinded by his need for revenge to listen to sense right now, and Bonnie is . . . well, she's young and wishy-washy in her beliefs right now because of you and the way you align yourself with vampires, but her instincts tell her that Imelda is right in what she says about vampires . . . Deep down, she hates them as much as Imelda." Looking away from Elena I grumbled, "Which is why it is particularly poignant that she chose saving Stefan over me, but that's beside the point." 

"Bonnie is nothing like Imelda. She considers Stefan a friend, and - "

My attention quickly returned to Elena as I stopped her. "And how long has it taken her to even give Caroline much of a chance?" Elena didn't have an immediate answer, so I gave it to her. "It's still something tenuous that could end any time Bonnie thinks Caroline has crossed a line she doesn't like, and we both know how she reacted after her Grandmother's death . . . She has reason to hate them. Part of her does, and that kind of hate is hard to extinguish once it gets started, and then there's Klaus, who everyone hates, so she thinks it's okay to hate him, and that means - "

"You think she's the only one who can open the coffin, don't you? That's why you think Imelda told her to talk to her Mom."

"You're like a little terrier, aren't you? Just grab ahold of something and won't let go." Elena didn't respond, and I sighed before looking down at my dandelion. Methodically plucking the pedals, I said, "Yeah . . . I think the first time Imelda met Bonnie, she was insulted by the things Bonnie did to lose her powers, and she didn't particularly want to help her, but then you went and called her before Bonnie went to see her a second time, told her about the problem with Vicki over the phone, and then by the time you got there, Imelda had already contacted the Original Witch to tell her to back off, and that is when she was offered a deal she couldn't refuse."

"But we already knew that. We knew that she was here waiting for something that the Original Witch wanted her to do, so why - "

"Because this is it. Everyone, and I mean everyone is playing into the Original Witch's plans. She has everyone exactly where she wants them, and nobody is listening to me, so she's going to get what she wants. Imelda's helping her by doing small things here and there to make sure things get back on track. Bonnie is working hard to try and get her powers back, so she can do whatever it is she thinks is right to protect you from Klaus. Stefan is angry, so he's taken that coffin to the little coven we've got growing here in town, and - "

"Coven? I don't know much, but I don't think you can call Imelda and Bonnie a coven. They don't even talk to one another."

"That you know about . . . and no, two witches, does not a coven make, but three or four? That's a good start on one, and let's not forget all those dead witches that are hanging around the place. You've got a massive witch problem in town, and - "

"What are you even talking about? There aren't even 3 or 4 - "

"Well, there's Bonnie's Mom, which would make 3, and - "

"Bonnie has only seen her a couple of times, and talked to her on the phone a couple of times."

"Yeah, well, she doesn't have to be mother of the year to be a witch, so - "

In exasperation, Elena exclaimed, "She doesn't even have any magic."

"Oh come on, Elena! She lost it the same way Bonnie did, and Bonnie's is coming back, so - "

"I don't know that it is. She probably needs to apologize to you and make things right if - "

Looking back down at my dandelion, I muttered, "Thanks for the heads up. If I see her coming, I'll run the other way. Might buy me some time."

"For what?!"

"To find that stupid casket and do what I should've done, which is throw it in the ocean."

"What's in it?"

I mostly just looked at her in response and once again debated on what I should say. Eventually, I decided on saying, "Well, what do you usually put in caskets, Elena?"

"It's a person?" My eyebrows ticked up in the affirmative, and I waited for her to figure it out. When it didn't look like the answer was going to be forthcoming, I released the breath I'd been holding and shook my head before looking back down at the flower in my hands. Seeing that I'd given up on her, Elena sounded a little wounded as she said, "It's someone who can kill Klaus." My focus stayed on pulling off another pedal, and a minute later, she tried, "It's a witch . . . you said 3 or 4. Bonnie's Mom would make three, and then I interrupted you . . . the fourth would be whoever is in that coffin, right?" My eyebrows rose again as I bit my bottom lip and looked at her. She seemed more than a little worried as she looked off to the side and said, "And it's not just any witch, is it? It's someone that would mean something to Klaus, or he wouldn't have been carting this witch around with his family . . . Is it . . . " She looked at me, and I nodded. "But . . . no . . . he killed her. How could - " I still refused to answer, but it's not like she needed me to do it. Answering herself, Elena said, "Magic . . . that could preserve her body. It's why the casket won't open. You need magic to open it . . . and Imelda . . . Imelda's helping her come back." I shrugged a shoulder, and Elena sat back, while she thought about it. "But if she want's to kill her son, then - "

"I think it's all her children, not just Klaus."

"But why would a mother - "

"What did Imelda say that first night?"

Searching through her memories, Elena finally said, "She's watched her children, and she finally understands why the balance needs to be maintained . . . Imelda didn't say it was just the son, who killed the Original Witch, but her children." Looking up at me, Elena said, "Even Elijah?"

"Yeah, I'd say so. He is one of her children."

"But he's not like them."

"I'm guessing after 1000 years, it doesn't really matter to her, and maybe he used to be like the rest of them. 1000 years is a long time to get your act together and fall and get yourself back together again a few times."

"Do you think that whatever she has planned for her children can also be used against other vampires, like Damon? Is that why Isobel told you to protect Klaus?"

"I don't know. I don't have it all figured out. I just know opening that coffin is a bad idea. The balance may need to be maintained, but after 1000 years, that balance has realigned to include vampires, because if nothing else, they are a counter balance to werewolves, and if the Original Witch and Imelda are working together to eradicate all vampires, then I'd consider that genocide, but they'll think they're right . . . which is what makes them dangerous, and it makes Bonnie dangerous too, because she wants to hate vampires and will help them. If it means getting in her daughter's good books, then I'd say her Mom will want to help too."

"Aren't you being a little paranoid?"

I preferred the term 'cautious.' "Well, is it paranoia if I'm right?"

"But you don't know that you're right."

"I guess we'll see."

Looking down at the key safe in her hands, Elena nodded, "Yeah, I guess we will." Glancing at me, she changed the subject. "You know today's Caroline's birthday, right?" I nodded. "Are you coming to the party we're having for her?"

Well, this was the first I was hearing about any party. "She's having a hard time with her birthday. I don't think she wants a party."

"Why do you say that?"

"Uh, because she said, 'I don't really feel like celebrating my birthday this year,' when I said I was going to pay her back for the birthday party she threw us."

Elena's shoulder's slumped. "Oh . . . well why would - "

"Because she's hung up on being dead. It kind of makes it hard for her to want to get excited about when she was born when that's all she's focused on right now."

"If I came up with something else, do you think you'd come?"

"Not if it's tonight. I already have plans."

"What?"

Dropping my dandelion, I looked at her. "You're annoying, you know that?"

"I'm not annoying. You just have a short fuse."

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. I have to babysit two 150-year old man-babies tonight and pretend like the Council is going to listen to anything I have to say if I even say anything at all. I'm hanging out with Caroline on Saturday night, so I'll make it up to her then. We're going to be celebrating the things she can do now that she couldn't do when she was a human."

"Like what?"

If she thought I was going to give her any ideas on what to do for Caroline's party, then she was going to be sorely disappointed. As I got to my feet, I tried to get us back on track. "Less talking, more training. We'll only do a mile run today instead of two, and - "

Standing, so she could stretch, Elena muttered, "Why do I get the feeling this has nothing to do with training and everything to do with - "

"Making you stop talking? Yeah, that's about right." 

"You're not very nice sometimes." I took off at a jog, and she followed suit as she asked, "Are you still going to show me how to use a crossbow?"

"Well that depends. Are you going to push yourself to finish this mile fast enough that we have time to - "

She picked up her pace. Guess she really wanted to shoot a crossbow, not that I could blame her. I never got tired of shooting one, and as far as weapons went, they were a good weapon for her to learn. Stakes were all well and good, but they definitely required you to be close enough to stab a vampire that was trying to kill you unless you knew how to throw one, and she was terrible at that. If she learned how to use a crossbow, she'd have to get good at anticipating when and where to shoot because vampires didn't usually stand around to get shot, but I didn't want her to get frustrated too soon, so today it would mostly be about getting acquainted with the weapon, learning how to load it, aim, and shoot. Hopefully, she was good at it, because I wanted her to be good enough at one thing to feel more confident in her ability to protect herself. That was sort of the whole point of all of this.


	48. Communication is Key

I walked with Damon to the front door of the Founder's Hall. We always went to these things together, but this felt a little different, because with the other Council meetings, we were together day in and day out, and the meetings were an otherwise boring interruption from whatever we were doing. This time, I was kind of looking forward to going just because it meant spending some time with him, because we'd both been busy dealing in different ways with the fallout with Klaus being here.

We separated briefly, so he could look for Stefan, but he wasn’t gone long, just long enough for me to mingle with a couple of people who were on the Council. They were always awkward around me, like I was an outsider who shouldn’t be an insider, and there was very little I could do about my age being an issue. They were all middle-aged. I was 18, and they were never going to believe most of what I said unless they either saw a demonstration, or I was their age.

I finished a particularly cumbersome conversation with a Maxwell and was considering going to find Damon when he leaned over my shoulder and sing-songed, “Don't look now, but I think you missed one."

"Guy at our 3 o'clock?” I don’t know what it was about the guy, but he seemed a little out of place.

"Yep."

Damn. When it came to picking other monsters out of a crowd, Damon’s instincts were even better than mine, simply because of the nature of what he was, so I wasn’t going to disagree with him. Maybe Klaus had held back a hybrid or two at the Homecoming party to keep in his back pocket in the event that his father killed the others. With a grumble, I turned to look up at Damon. "You don't have to sound so smug about it."

"It does sort of crush the illusion of you getting one entirely over on him, doesn't it?" He seemed particularly amused by that, like I needed to learn a lesson on humility, and he was all too happy to point it out to me. Well, I may not be a perfectionist, like Caroline, but I hated failure just as much, and this hybrid situation wasn't anything I couldn't rectify. I took a step in the out-of-town hybrid's direction, and Damon grabbed my forearm to pull me back in front of him. "Not here . . . Besides, the moment's gone. That was then. This is now." Looking around the party, he added, "And right now I'm more interested in finding out whether his master is here and why."

My shoulders dropped as I realized he was right. I guess I'd been naive to think that tonight would be a Klaus-free zone. "I'm guessing the answers are yes and to get a dig in at you and Stefan."

Catching the disappointed tone in my voice, Damon went from surveying the crowd to looking down at me. "You made sure that Stefan’s not his puppet anymore, so there’s that."

Except the idea to use Klaus’s family to get Stefan free wasn’t my idea. It was Stefan’s. “Yeah, well, your brother is an ass, so I’m not sure that’s such a good thing, and now I find out that the one thing I thought I did right, I didn't finish."

"You still killed Mikael." 

"Even that's starting to feel like less and less of an accomplishment considering all the things I didn't do and probably won't do."

"Hey." Stepping back against the wall and turning me away from the crowd as he placed his hands on my shoulders, Damon ducked down to be closer to my height as he quietly said, "What you did - "

“It wasn't just me.” My glower slowly fell before I added, "It was all of us, including Stefan and Katherine, but especially you. I never considered you not part of my team. Your plan is the only way my plan could've worked. Maybe I added a dash of Rebekah in at the end to spice things up and keep you from killing Klaus, but the entire thing hinged on your success, and you carried it off to perfection. Apparently, I'm the one who dropped the ball on my end if there are still hybrids other than Tyler walking around here."

I saw him relax, and it was noticeable, like he was being relieved of a stress I hadn't realized was there. "You think we were working together."

"With the exception of about 5 seconds after Rebekah entered the picture, yeah." 

Giving me a faint smile, he murmured, "Your idea of teamwork is unique unto you."

"Is it?" I didn't think so. 

His smile grew. "Yeah . . . But I'll take it."

"Take what?"

"You don't need it. I'm not sure you've ever needed it, but the one thing you've thought you needed from me from Day 1 is my help."

Did he think that I thought that I’d outgrown him? “I don’t like that sentiment.”

I think my response wasn’t what he was expecting it to be. “It’s true though. That’s why you contacted me. You always said I was your partner, and I thought maybe I was when you needed me to be, but – “

“I’m not Katherine.”

Again, he hadn’t expected me to say that. “I know. I just – “

Well, tonight wasn’t going the way I’d thought it would at all. “It’s not your fault if I’ve lead you to believe that you’re only important in so much as you are useful to me.“

He was quick to deny that. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that before, I know you sort of thought I was . . . well me, but now with Klaus – Look, I know you want to train with him – whatever that means, and you think he’s faster than me and stronger than me and smarter than me, and – “

“I said that before I even met him.”

“But you still think it.”

“No I don’t.” His eyebrows arched, like he knew that wasn’t true, and I sighed. “Because of his age and the fact that he’s a hybrid – yeah, okay, he’s stronger and faster than you, but smarter? Not at all. He is limited by what he thinks he knows to be true based on 1000 years of experience, and you are much better at being able to think outside the box. You’re crafty, and your street smarts are impeccable. You’re both impulsive, but he’s worse, and unlike you, he plays the victim. If you piss someone off, you know why they’re mad. He thinks the world is out to get him for no reason simply because he doesn’t understand that his behavior is what has led to others wanting to exact revenge.”

Damon considered it, looked like he was maybe coming around to what I’d said, but still decided to say, “Then why do you want to train with him? You’ve never once wanted to train with me.”

I'd never even considered it and because of that, I don’t think I could feel any worse than I did just then. I was briefly at a loss of words and then finally said, “If you want to train with me, then bite me.”

He couldn’t hide his surprise as well that time. “What?”

“If you want to train me, then I need to believe you’re a threat, because that’s the only way I’ll take you seriously enough to learn from you when we’re training. Katherine’s done it. Caroline’s done it. Stefan’s done it. Klaus doesn’t have to do it for me to know he would without hesitation . . . bite me, and you can train me.”

He almost looked offended now. “I’d never bite you.”

“I know. It’d change something between us if you did.” For a moment, Damon looked defeated, as his head dropped to concede my point, so I said, “And I don’t want to train with him. I did, but what I really wanted was to prove to myself that I was a worthy opponent, and I did that. Mikael terrified him, and I killed Mikael. That was enough for me. Stefan needed my help, and I was tired of him always being around, so I helped him with his plan to – “

“So, stealing Klaus’s family was Stefan’s idea?”

I’d wonder how he didn’t know that, but I was starting to understand why he may feel the way he did right now. We’d talked about how I’d screwed up his plan to kill Klaus and why I’d killed Mikael, but we hadn’t really talked about what happened when Klaus came to the house to get his family back. I guess it was an uncomfortable conversation for both of us for different reasons. 

Deep down, I felt like an idiot for not only acting the way I had even though it’d been a means to an end, but I also felt like an idiot for helping Stefan at all with the way things were going now that he was free. Damon apparently didn’t want confirmation of something he must fear deep down as well. It was time to dispense of that notion immediately. “I mean, I filled in the details of his plan to make it more believable, but yeah, Stefan’s been planning this for a while, and he’s had multiple plans.”

Damon hesitated before saying, “But it was your idea to make Klaus believe it was your idea.“

I shouldn’t be getting credit for any of that any more than I should be getting credit for killing that hunter in the woods. I only deserved credit for the actual killing of Mikael and the hybrids that night. “No, that was Stefan’s idea too. My idea was to go over the top with it to make Klaus think I was being a brat instead of a deadly opponent. It was the only way I could see it working without somebody being killed.”

“But that could still go wrong, especially with the way things are right now.”

“I know.”

“Then why would you – “

“Like I said, I was tired of having Stefan follow me around everywhere, and he let me know he was more himself than inhuman, so I guess it felt like the right thing to do.”

“I take it all back. You do need me. You let my brother use you and walk off with the only thing that could make it all go away.”

I hated to kill his newfound confidence, but, “I don’t need you.” Before he could get too upset by that, I quickly added, “It’s a problem if you think that’s why you’re important to me, and I can understand why you think that. I didn’t exactly keep my intentions a secret when we met, but – “ I didn’t know how to say this. Bowing my head, I tried, “I guess you screwed that up, because you were relentless about being my friend, and things changed . . . Now, I think that maybe it isn’t this way for everyone, but for people like you and me, maybe we survive the families we were given until we find the ones we want, and for me, that’s you.” 

My eyes flitted up to him, and my heart started pumping faster. I knew that look. What I’d said had hit the mark, and he wanted to kiss me right now. “Damon – “

“I know.” He might know we were in a room full of people with Klaus nearby, but his eyes said he didn’t care about that. My eyebrow ticked up in a challenging look, and he took a long drawn-out breath before pulling back a bit. Forcing himself to look away from me, he glanced around the room before directing his attention back on me. “I need to know what’s in the coffin, Eve.” I opened my mouth, still a little unsure of how I’d respond to the change of topic, and he added, “If you want to find another way that doesn’t involve killing him, then I’m in as long as I know he won’t be our problem anymore, but I need to know that if I give it back to him, it won’t be used against us.”

See, I knew he’d known where that coffin was. “I can say that if what’s in there is let out into the world, it will kill Klaus.”

“And then you think I’ll die because of what your Mom said.” I nodded, and he looked around the room again to make sure there were no ears listening in on us before he leaned closer to say, “Okay, so what’s in it?”

“His Mom.” 

Damon hesitated. “The witch who turned them into the first vampires?”

“Yep.”

Even though he may not necessarily agree with what my Mom had said and was going along with it for now because it’s what I wanted, he immediately started to see how this could be a problem for him. It's the way his mind worked. "Does she know how to reverse the process?”

“Either that, or she knows how to kill every last vampire there is . . . maybe with a counter spell?” My phone rang, and I reached for it. “I don’t know, but I think it’s bad, and that’s why Imelda is working with her to bring her back.“

The caller ID said it was Elena, so I answered, but before I could say 'hello,' I heard a distressed voice on the other end of the line. " _What are you doing, Stefan?_ "


	49. Wickery Bridge

My eyes immediately locked with Damon’s, and he reached for the phone, but I turned away from him and covered the receiver with my hand, so Stefan wouldn’t hear the voices of the people in here. She’d said something before I could, because she didn’t want Stefan hearing me, and she sounded more like background noise than the scratches I could hear against the phone, which led me to believe it was in her pocket. That meant it wasn’t safe for her to talk more openly. Damon speaking to his brother wouldn’t do us any favors either. A hostage negotiator, he was not.

I glanced at Damon over my shoulder and suspected by the way he was looking around the room that his brother had been here when we first got here, but wasn’t anymore, so it’s not like the call was most likely coming from inside the house. I started heading for the door, while still listening to what was happening on the other end of the line. _"Where are we going?"_

Come on, Little Sister. Give me something I can use. She sounded angry and scared, but he wasn’t giving anything away. I didn’t know how long he’d had her, but I felt a little relieved that she had the wherewithal to call me if something was wrong. _”Why did you do that to Matt? We were just at the cemetery celebrating Caroline’s birthday. You didn’t have to –_ “

Finally, Stefan responded. “ _He’ll be fine, or he won’t . . . I don’t really care._ ” 

It wasn’t just the words Stefan used. Those on their own might almost sound like a rebellious teenager. It was his tone. He sounded cold. That was bad. He was at his most dangerous when he went cold. _“Where are you taking me, Stefan?”_

Again, she got nothing. I went towards my car, but Damon grabbed my free hand and pulled me in the direction of his. Such a control freak. _Are you taking me out of town? I mean this is the main road out of town, heading East – Stop it! Stefan don’t -_ ” 

There were sounds of a short struggle, and then Stefan came through loud and clear. “ _Eve –wanna race? Something tells me I’m faster._ ” The line went dead, and I looked down at the phone as Damon took off out of the parking lot. There was no point in calling her back. I’m guessing Stefan wouldn’t answer.

I glanced at Damon. “Do you know where he’s going?”

You could see that his mind was going a million miles a second, even as he shook his head. A moment later, he said, “But I know where we can head him off . . . just have to use some back roads to get there.”

I didn’t really know any back roads, so maybe it was better that he was driving. “This is obviously about Klaus, so – “

“His next call will probably be to him. ‘Get out of town, or – “

He stopped himself, so I finished it for him. “No more hybrids . . . But he wouldn’t – “

“I have no idea what he’s capable of doing right now. Every single thing he’s thought of trying has gone wrong. To get free of Klaus, he had to squander the best leverage he had when he gave Klaus his family back. One or two hybrids running around town that I don’t even think he knows about aren’t enough. All that’s left is a coffin he can’t open. There’s not as much impact with that.”

“Except he has the four witches of the vampire apocalypse working with him, doesn’t he?”

“Four?”

So he didn’t deny that Stefan was working with witches. “At least four. All the witches in this town, living or dead, are on this, aren’t they?” His jaw clenched, and I knew I was right without him having to answer. “And then there’s Bonnie’s Mom.”

He started to shake his head. “She can’t – “

“Yet, but I bet since Bonnie’s the one asking, she’s working on getting her powers back just like her daughter, isn’t she.” 

A look of momentary fondness washed across his features before he cast a brief look in my direction, and I knew that theory had been correct as well. Looking back out the windshield, Damon answered, “The problem is that my brother needs immediate satisfaction, and he hasn’t had any, so he’s trying to prove just how seriously Klaus should take him by doing the one thing Klaus would never expect him to do.”

I didn’t say anything for about half a minute as we flew down the back roads surrounding Mystic Falls. “He’s not going to back down, is he?”

“Honestly?” I looked at him to get his opinion, and Damon said, “He can’t back down now that he’s taken this step. Klaus is the one who has to blink first, and if he doesn’t then . . . if it were me, I’d turn her given his options.” So, she’d die but not really, and Klaus wouldn’t get his hybrids. “I mean, I wouldn’t do it if it were you.” His eyes were on the road, and he was concentrating on using those vampire reflexes to get us wherever he was going as fast as possible, so he wasn’t really trying to hide the concerned look on his face as he said, “Probably stab me as many times as you could before you crashed my car for even thinking it.” A few moments later, he added, “But this is Stefan, and he wouldn’t do this to her if he was himself. His brain is just fried . . . This is on Klaus, Eve, you can’t take it out on him when we get there.”

His eyes flicked in my direction, like he wanted me to agree to what he’d said, but the best I could do was, “I guess it depends on what we find when we get wherever we’re going.”

“Eve – “

“Damon, if he kills my sister, I’m not going to just let him get by with it.”

Sounding hopeful, Damon responded, “He might just take her out of town and keep her hidden.”

Maybe. But he’d only be able to do that for so long before she ran away and came back, and what would he achieve by doing that? She’d be safe for a while, but was he doing this to protect her or get Klaus to do what he wanted? “That seems a little passive for the way he’s acting right now, doesn’t it?”

Damon considered it and tried, “Maybe the worst thing he’ll do is turn her.”

“You almost died to keep her from turning. My Dad did die to keep her from turning. If he throws that away over this, then I might not kill him, but I’m not going to go easy on him either.“

His facial features relaxed. That’s something he could live with if push came to shove. “He might not do anything. Klaus might give into his demands and – “

“Leave town without her? Not likely unless those are part of Stefan’s terms, but even then, Klaus would drain her of all her blood before he goes, and he will find a way to do that, because she doesn’t listen to what anyone has to say most of the time. All he has to do is take someone she cares about to lure her away from Imelda, and she’s screwed. Then of course there’s your brother. If Klaus agrees to leave town, he might live up to his word on that, but it doesn’t mean he won’t kill Stefan before he goes either . . . He’ll probably kill your brother if she’s turned too. As for me – “ I paused, and Damon turned a sober look in my direction, so I laid out my terms. “We either stop your brother from making a deal with Klaus, or he turns her. Those are the two paths of least resistance that I can see. If he kills her outright or goads Klaus into killing her, then - ”

“I swear to you that I won’t let either of those things happen.” I exhaled a soft breath in response before giving him a slight nod to let him know I knew he’d do the best he could to follow through on that. I think we both knew there was only so much he could do though, that either of us could do. A lot of this hinged on Stefan, timing, and maybe a little bit of luck. I was hoping that Elena’s fast thinking on calling me and Damon’s even faster driving would help with some of that.

His attention returned to the road as he pushed the car to its limits, and in what was probably almost no time at all, but felt like an eternity, we were following a road that ran parallel to a river. The bridge out of town was up ahead, and as we sped onto the main road out of town, he slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel. The car spun in a 180 before coming to a sideways stop to block anyone from being able to use the bridge. Despite the circumstances that had been fun, exhilarating. I couldn’t help but laugh. 

The smirk on Damon’s face before he exited the car said he was quite proud of himself for eliciting that kind of a response from me. For my part, I scrambled out my door intent on finding out what his plan was, but it would appear there wasn’t time for one. Damon’s attention zeroed in on the road up ahead of us, but I didn’t need to have super-human hearing to see the headlights coming down the road maybe a mile away. “Is it – “

“It’s his car anyway.”

At the speed that car was taking the winding road, we had less than a minute to come up with something. “Well, is he going to be able to stop even if he sees your car? He’s going awfully fast.” When Damon didn’t immediately answer, I tore my eyes away from the headlights. “Damon, if he hits your car at that speed, she’ll die.” I got nothing. “Damon?”

Without looking away from the challenge in front of him, he finally answered, “I’m gonna slow him down. Stay here,” and then he was gone.

Stay here and do what? I guess if he was doing what I thought he might be doing, he’d need blood. He didn’t keep blood in his car. He was too smart for that given this town, but it sure would come in handy for moments like this. He wouldn’t be lying down the way he sometimes did when he was hunting. He’d be standing, so he could react quicker to whichever way Stefan turned the wheel. He didn’t want the car to crash. Ideally, if his brother saw him standing in the middle of the road, he’d stop, but he was probably going too fast for that, so if Stefan swerved, Damon would have to get in front of the car to stop it from hitting one of the trees. The worst case scenario would be if Stefan plowed right through Damon, because - 

My brain shut down, and my feet carried me forward of their own accord as I heard the squeal of tires come from around the corner. They were immediately followed by the sound of metal crunching and glass breaking. I had a feeling that the worst case scenario just happened, and less than a second later, the red Porche was fishtailing around the corner as Stefan tried to regain control of the car. Damon’d slowed him down all right, but he hadn’t exactly stopped him. Stefan had gone from maybe 120 to 60, and he was having some trouble making himself stop even though I knew he could see Damon’s car blocking the bridge and me standing in front of it. 

I should move. Yeah, that’s about all I could do at this point. I jumped at roughly the same time that I saw a terrified Elena reach towards the steering wheel. Before I even hit the ground, I knew what she was thinking, but it was too late to tell her not to do it, because I was going to be all right. As I landed, it wasn’t to the sounds of metal smashing into metal. It was to the sounds of the engine revving as it careened into the brush of the woods. I rolled onto my back to watch as the car flew past a tree and right over the edge. 

Fuck . . . What was I supposed to do? I forced a breath into my lungs that I hadn’t known I was holding and forced myself to my feet. My steps were slow at first, and then I was running to the other side of the bridge to see what the damage was. I don’t know if it was by luck or design, but the car had been going fast enough that it hadn’t just driven down the ravine and crashed in a fiery blaze at the bottom. I guess that was something. It was slowly sinking in the waters below. They were high. We’d had some rain recently. That worked in my favor.

Without really thinking it through, I moved to just in front of where the car was, took about 4 steps back and sprinted forward. My hand hit the railing, and I vaulted myself right over it too late to stop at the sound of my name being called from down the road. It wasn’t exactly the Brooklyn Bridge, so it felt like I was in the air less than a second before I was brutally plummeting through the surface of the water, my body trying to acclimate to the instant cold as I went further and further down. The depth was good. At least I wasn’t going to wind up paralyzed, but stopping my decent was proving a little difficult, or maybe I was just stuck in a current. 

At some point, I stopped dropping and was able to claw my way to the surface. Breaking through to the night air, I gasped in a gigantic lungful of it, oriented myself to my surroundings, and then started swimming out of the current and in the direction of the car. It was sinking faster now. There were two ways this could go. I could wait until it was fully submerged, so the pressure inside the car was the same as outside. Then I'd be able to open the door, or I could smash a window . . . or Stefan could, but he seemed to be in a state of vampire shock as he tried to wake up an unconscious Elena. Or maybe she was dead. I didn’t know. All I knew was I needed to get her out of there. 

I knocked. No response from him, and now he was starting to make me angry. He needed to get his shit together. This wasn’t the time to panic. I reached for my favorite stake. It may be made of wood, but it was indestructible, or it would be as soon as I got rid of my magic-resistant hex bag. I dug that out of my pocket and let it go in the water before attempting to smash the window with the handle of my stake. It may not have broken through on my first attempt, but it did crack. That was enough to get Stefan’s attention, but I wasn’t waiting around for him to do his part. I hit the window again and more cracks splintered across the glass. I should get it on 3, or I would have if the glass hadn’t exploded from the inside out before I could. 

The debris from the window sprayed me, but registering the sting of cuts was secondary to using my stake to clear the glass from around the edges, so I could reach in and check Elena’s pulse. It was there, faint, but there. There was always the concern of making a neck or back injury worse, but what was I supposed to do, leave her there to drown? Water was flooding in through the window now. 

Stefan had already unbuckled her seatbelt, so I turned her upper body away from me. My hands went under her arms, so I could try and pull her out backwards, and a second set of hands tried to help me. My response was immediate as I snarled, “Don’t touch her,” before tugging on her upper body and using the water taking some of her weight to wiggle her towards the window.

“Eve – “

I refused to look at him as I said, “I will deal with you when you get home. My main concern is – “

“So is mine. Let me – “

My eyes finally went to his as I coldly cut him off. “I think you’ve done quite enough for one night.” Planting my feet against the car door, I pushed against it as I pulled on Elena with all my might, and a couple seconds later, she was free. I looked towards the shore and saw Damon waiting there to help me get her out of the water, so I swam towards him using one arm, ever mindful of keeping her face out of the water, but he didn’t wait for me to get there before diving in to help. When he got to us, I handed her over to him without any qualms as I watched Stefan swim past us to the bank.

Crawling onto the shore after them, I put my stake away when I saw that Stefan was no longer in sight, and then Damon was wrapping his arm around my waist to help me stand. I looked to where he’d left Elena. “I’m okay. Elena – “

“You’re bleeding. Let me see.”

He didn’t look angry . . . yet. I’m sure that would come in time. Right now, he was more concerned with examining me for injuries, but he’s the one who looked like he needed medical attention. “You’re a mess.”

“I’m fine.”

“You need blood.” 

He responded absentmindedly. “You offering?”

I shrugged. “I might have a cut or two that requires stitches, and you’re on vervain with Klaus here, so you might be able to handle it . . . no biting necessary.”

His examination of me stopped as his eyes flitted to mine. A moment later, his hands were cradling my face as his forehead rested on mine. “I think you’ve done enough saving for one day.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Besides, you have enough vervain in you to knock me out a few times over, and I need to get you two to the hospital.”

“I’m fine.” I didn’t feel like I’d almost drowned or had any broken bones or internal injuries. No sprains or strains. Maybe a few scrapes on my arms from the window. I wasn’t wearing my leather jacket, so the glass had cut me, but that was probably better than wearing it and being weighed down in the water.

“Let a doctor check you out when we take Elena to the hospital, and I won’t get angry about you literally jumping off a bridge tonight.”

The threat of him being angry with me might not be enough to make me think before I did something dangerous, but maybe he’d found a way to finally use it to his advantage, because that seemed reasonable. I nodded in agreement, and he touched his lips to mine in a gentle kiss that seemed to relieve most of his stress. To do more than that with his injuries would be dangerous. With those, his need for blood was higher than normal, and vampires’ emotions were tied in with their blood lust, so it’s for the best that he didn’t linger for long. 

As he pulled back, I whispered, “I’m sorry for worrying you, but I’m not sorry I did it.”

A small smile played across his lips before he said, “Who says I was worried?”

“Your face still says it loud and clear.”

He waited a beat before coming to some kind of realization as he said, “You’re going to keep doing this to me, aren’t you?”

“It’s not intentional. I didn’t wake up this morning thinking, ‘What can I do to give Damon a heart attack?’”

“Probably be the first vampire in history to ever die of one.”

I dryly quipped, “I don’t know. Don’t most vampires die by heart attack?” and he tried not to laugh, but quickly lost out to a quiet snort. 

“You come up with the worst jokes sometimes.”

“They make you laugh.”

“Yeah, I guess they do.” Becoming a little more somber, he asked, “You’re really okay?” I thought I was. I nodded, and he released me as he stood and turned to look down at Elena. “We should get her to the hospital.”

“Can you – “

He was full of bravado as he brushed off what I’d been about to say. “Please. I could carry her in my sleep.”

“Really? Because I couldn’t help but notice how long it took you to get down here.”

“Shut up.” 

He went to pick her up, and I had to say, “Thanks . . . for putting your body on the line. If you hadn’t slowed him down, it would’ve been a lot worse.”

As Damon hoisted her into his arms, he asked, “How’d they end up down here instead of – “

“Elena grabbed the wheel.”

“Maybe you two are more alike than I thought.”

I smiled as I watched my footing on the path behind him. “Well, she didn’t stab him.” I paused before adding, “I think she thought he was going to hit me the way he hit you.”

Looking back at me over his shoulder, Damon asked, “Was he?”

“I jumped out of the way, so I probably would’ve been fine.”

Trudging forward, he was quiet until we got back up to the top. “I’m going to put an end to this.”

“You don’t think this was enough to make Stefan rethink things?”

He put Elena in his back seat before closing the door and turning to look at me. “He could go one of two ways after all of this. He might realize he’s gone too far and give it up, so he can start doing some kind of penance, or he’ll realize he’s gone too far and think there’s no going back. My money is on the latter at this point.”

“You were already thinking about giving the coffin back, so what more are you going to do?”

Opening the driver’s side door, Damon stopped before getting into the car and answered, “I haven’t got it all worked out, but I will.”


	50. Planting the Seeds of an Exit Strategy

I stared at the clipboard in my hand and thought that maybe it would’ve been better if I’d just convinced Damon to give Elena some of his blood, but then vampire blood wasn’t some kind of magical drug. It was blood, which was gross, and there was the potential for a pretty negative side effect. That side effect, namely becoming a vampire if you were killed with the blood in your system, was what kept me from suggesting it. 

Elena was a target right now. It was probably best not to tempt fate even though that fate may have already been tempted. I honestly didn’t know if Stefan had given her blood the way Damon had suggested he might to turn her, but I figured it was best to err on the side of caution in the event that he hadn’t. I was also erring on the side of caution by sticking close to her if he had. Somehow I’d managed to convince the medical staff here to let me stay in Elena’s room once they’d stabilized her. They were even letting me sit in here to fill out these forms that I was taking an inordinately long time to complete.

I’d filled most of this form out without any problems. Name? Fine. Birth date? Fine. Family medical history? Fine . . . and probably better than she could. Social security number and insurance information? Not so fine. That meant that I’d had to make a call that I wasn’t all that keen on making. I didn’t want to worry Jeremy until Elena was in better shape, but maybe he deserved to know what was happening for a change, and if he was given an important task to do, like getting the documents necessary for her admission, maybe it’d make him feel like he was helping even though there really wasn’t anything he could do at this point. What would make things infinitely worse was if I called, told him what was needed, and then he couldn’t find it. I really hadn’t wanted to make that call, but I did it, because it had to be done. Guess there was a downside to putting vervain in the town's water supply, or the woman behind the desk could have been compelled into overlooking this paperwork process.

After giving the hospital a big wad of cash to cover my expenses on a thorough check up, Damon had gone to get some blood. With his body needing blood to compensate for the injuries it’d just healed, the hospital was probably the last place he should be. Once he got that sorted, I think he was going to go look for his brother, so I didn’t really have anything to keep me awake other than the need to keep watch in case one of Klaus’s thugs came looking here looking for Elena. They shouldn’t, because I hadn’t told him where she was, but he probably had eyes and ears everywhere, so it was a possibility, especially now that he knew she was still alive.

After I’d had my check-up that included me obtaining professionally administered stiches, I’d called Caroline to tell her what happened only to get her mother, who’d been in something of a panic even though she tried to hide it. She told me that Tyler had bitten Caroline, and it was bad. According to Liz, Matt told her that Caroline had told him that Tyler had gotten a call from Klaus, argued with him about something, and then wound up biting her maybe 10 minutes later after she’d calmed him down. That sire bond was entirely too dangerous if it could completely override Tyler’s free will like that. I knew he’d never hurt Caroline under normal circumstances, and I’m pretty sure that’s what the argument over the phone had been about, but he still did it. If Klaus was benevolent, then the sire bond may not be such a problem, but he wasn’t.

My suspicion was that Klaus had most likely ordered the hit on Caroline in retaliation for what Stefan had said to him in the car on the way to the bridge. Maybe he’d even heard the crash over the phone. I told Liz that I’d fix it and then immediately called Klaus to tell him that Elena was alive. He wanted to know how. I’d told him that wasn’t important. What was important was that he was going to go fix what he’d done to Caroline, or I was going to kill his remaining hybrids, starting with the one I’d seen at the Founder’s Council party that night. 

He hadn’t really taken that very well, but then I reminded him that this was his doing for flying off the handle without having all the facts first, and he’d taken it out on someone who had no relevance to what was going on right now. Stefan didn’t care about Caroline anywhere close to as much as he cared about Elena, and he’d just kidnapped Elena and threatened her life to make a point to Klaus, so all killing Caroline was going to do was piss me off. It wouldn’t affect Stefan in the slightest. 

I think I might’ve started rambling in my ranting, because by the time I was done, he’d already gotten in his car and was on his way to Caroline’s. He said he’d do it if it meant I’d stop bothering him, but he could’ve hung up on me at any point if that’s why he was doing it. Maybe I’d convinced him in my extended monologue to do the right thing? Doubtful. I think he just found me yelling at him amusing for some reason. There was the possibility that he'd always planned on doing it if he got something out of it, and my phone call spurred him into action. I don't think he would've done it out of the goodness of his heart. There was a part of him that wanted to do the right thing most of the time. It’s just that it was a small part of him, and he didn’t usually listen to it. 

By the time I was done on the phone with Klaus, I was exhausted. It’d been a fairly exhausting night, so it was with heavy eyes that I waited. Try as I might, I just couldn’t seem to keep my eyelids open after a while, which might be why I was almost dozing when someone walked into the room with what I perceived to be a loud, “Hey,” but that was probably relatively quiet. It’s just that given the quiet, but steady beep of the surroundings, and my drowsiness, it’s seemed almost booming.

Opening my eyes, my head rolled in Jeremy’s direction. “Hey.” Handing him the forms, I said, “You’re up.” He took a couple of cards out of his pocket and instantly had the answers required to finish filling out the form. I’m guessing his Aunt had kept up on these things, so he had to go through her things to find them, which couldn’t have been easy for him to do and might be why it’d taken him so long to get here. Poor kid. He was already an orphan twice over, had lost his first two loves, and with the way things were going with his sister, on track to lose her too.

He turned to the nurse who’d chased him in here and handed her the clipboard before turning his back on her to walk over to his sister’s bed. The nurse’s attention came to me, and I nodded for her to go. “He’s fine.”

“Visiting hours – “

“Are over, and you’re already breaking the rules by letting me be in here. I understand. One of us will have to go. It’ll probably be me, so be good to him, when I’m gone.”

Because their father had been a doctor, Elena and Jeremy’s parents had been well known by the staff at this hospital, which is probably why I’d been allowed the leniency I’d already had. Her eyes flicked from me to Jeremy to Elena and eventually she sighed. “Just keep it down. I’ll be back in a little while to check on her.”

I didn’t know what she thought we’d be doing, having a dance party in here around Elena’s body? I nodded anyway to tell her we’d be quiet, and then she was gone. As soon as she was, Jeremy turned to me with a hint of anger. “What happened?”

“She was in a car accident.”

“Yeah, I know. You said that over the phone. What I can’t figure out is who was driving, because I know she left with Bonnie.“ Before I could respond, Jeremy looked back down at his sister and said, “Is Bonnie . . . I tried calling – “

“As far as I know, Bonnie is at home in bed. She wasn’t there.”

“Then who – “

“Stefan took her from the party.” 

“Why would she get lift from him? Did she and Bonnie have a fight? I didn’t want that. I just – “

“What are you talking about?”

The features on his face contorted briefly before he looked at me. “Bonnie and I broke up this morning. She had a hard time understanding everything that happened with Anna, and I’ve been having a problem with all the time she spends on the phone with that guy who lives with her Mom. I just . . . Is this my fault? Did they fight? Is that why Elena got in the car with him, because – “

“No. When I say that he took her from the party, I mean, he _took_ her from the party. He knocked Matt out to do it and then drove as fast as his little Porche could carry them on the road out of town. They didn’t quite make it to Wickery bridge, but they went off the road and wound up in the river anyway.”

His anger built until he looked back over his shoulder at his sister’s peaceful slumber, and then all that energy was building inside of him just dissipated before he grabbed her hand and sat on the side of her bed. He was still angry, but it was more of a seething kind of anger that he was keeping in check until he was sure that she was going to be all right. “I saw her like this before . . . after – “

To spare him from having to think too much on the last car accident she’d been in at the Wickery Bridge, I said, “The difference is that she didn’t almost drown this time. She hit her head . . . She already woke up once, but they’re keeping her here for observations. She should be able to go home tomorrow if she doesn’t get any worse.”

His head quickly turned in my direction. “Worse?”

Slumping back in my chair, I thought about it. Was it better to be blunt or smooth things over, so he felt better, while he waited? He wasn’t a baby, so he didn’t need to be coddled, but at the same time, he’d already lost so much. “Yeah, well, you know . . . head injuries. If I say everything is going to be peaches and cream and then it’s not, you’ll feel worse.” Jeremy didn’t respond as he stared at his sister, so I tried, “Of course that doesn’t mean she won’t get better. There’s science or vampire blood if – “

“No . . . No, I’d rather take my chances with medicine.”

Well look at him making grown up decisions on his sister’s medical care. “Yeah . . . I know what you mean. There is one thing though. There’s a chance he gave her some of his blood at some point before they went in the water, so until she wakes up and can tell us for sure, someone needs to stay with her and make sure what happened to Caroline doesn’t happen to her.”

His head turned to look at me. “ _Before_ they went in the water? You mean on the way down, or – “

“No, I mean before they even got there. He took her to get at Klaus.”

There was that anger of his bubbling back up to the surface. “He did this to her on purpose?”

“Yes and no. I don’t know how far he was willing to take it if Klaus didn’t give into what he wanted. I honestly don’t think he thought that far in advance, because he seemed pretty shook when I got to the car. I guess the decision was taken out of his hands when Elena grabbed the wheel. He was going too fast to stop, so it was either try to stop, slowly go over the edge, and crash into the rocks along the shore, or speed up and shoot for the water. They had a better chance if he sped up. That’s about all the choice he had at that point.”

“Why does it sound like you were there?!”

I looked towards the door. That’d been a little loud. When I was sure nobody was going to come to kick one of us out, I muttered, “I was.”

“And she grabbed the wheel? Why would she – “

I looked from the doorway to him. “To keep him from running me over.”

“Why would she think – “

“Because she underestimates my cat-like reflexes to jump out of the way.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I didn’t say it was.” Trying to steer the conversation back into a more calming direction, I said, “The point is that while it could’ve been worse, she’s okay now. She just needs someone to keep an eye on her for the next day or two, or until she wakes up and says she doesn’t have vampire blood in her system.” Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say? He looked like he was still a tempest of emotion and itching to get out of here. If he did take off, it’d probably be to numb all those thoughts and feelings with some kind of drugs or alcohol, and he’d probably need a lot of either to get the job done, but when he sobered up again, all those things would come rushing back 10 fold. Anger and fear were at the top of the list. There was also confusion, which really just meant he wanted someone to tell him what to do, and there was sadness. Those tears were only an empty room away. He wasn’t a child, but he was a teenager, and that made him volatile even though most adults wouldn’t know how to react either if they’d lived the life he had. “And I can think of nobody better for the job than you.”

My words broke through his thoughts as his eyes turned in my direction. “Is he coming back to finish the job?”

No, I honestly didn’t think Stefan would do that. “I suspect he’s going to stay as far away from her as possible now.” Jeremy visibly relaxed until I added, “I think the problem is Klaus. This might push him into thinking that he should just take off with her now to prevent anything like this from happening again.”

His eyes immediately went to Elena. “What are we going to do – “

“Let me deal with Klaus. What you need to focus on is keeping an eye out for anyone you don’t know and calling me. There may still be one or two hybrids left that aren’t Tyler. We saw one tonight at the Founder’s Council party, so Klaus will probably just send one of them to – “

“To kill them, you cut off their heads, right?” 

Uh. Killing monsters was usually a pretty good distraction, but it wasn’t the kind of distraction he needed any more than he needed the drugs and alcohol. “Yeah, but look around you. Do you think one is just going to stand there and let you hack off its head with a scalpel? Call me, and I will – “

“By the time you get here, it might already be too late. Don’t you like always have a weapon on you? Give me one, and – “

“Jeremy, there are rules, and one of those is that you do not let the general public know that these monsters exist.” 

“Isn’t that exactly what they count on, so they can do whatever they want to people whenever they want to do it?”

Yeah, it was, but there was a larger picture he wasn’t seeing. “And how do you think people would react if they really knew what was out there? It’d be pandemonium. There’d be riots at the cover ups that have been involved to keep this hidden and mobs of people killing random people they think are strange on misguided witch hunts, others staying in their houses too afraid to leave . . . and the entire time vampires and werewolves and hybrids would blend in without being noticed, because they look just like normal everyday people.” He started to argue with me, and I quickly stopped him by adding, “You know for a guy who sees dead vampires now because he was killed by someone who knew just a little about what’s out there, I’d think you’d get it. You decapitating a guy in your sister’s hospital room is not the best way to deal with this.”

“And who would know? If the sheriff gets called, she’ll just say it was an animal attack, right?”

He had to see that I was right. Now he was just being stubborn. “Yeah, I don’t think that’d work. How would an animal that big get in and out of here without being seen? You’d probably get locked in an asylum, because she wouldn’t be able to hide what you did with as many witnesses as there are here, and nobody is going to believe that you killed him because he’s a hybrid. That’s the other reason these rules are in place – self-preservation. Denial runs deep in the veins of society. The larger public doesn’t want to know about these kinds of things. Trying to expose monsters is an uphill battle nobody could win. You’d have to take people one by one on hunts and have them see a vampire attacking before they’d believe you and even then, they’d try to explain it away logically . . . Or they’d die, because vampire safari’s aren’t exactly safe. You’d have to do that so many times with so many people that the balance tips from one or two or ten believers to more believers than non-believers, and there are too many people on the planet for that to work . . . even if you televised it by putting it on the internet, people would think it was doctored. It’s just not practical. If a hybrid shows up, call me, and I will deal with it . . . And maybe use your time to start planning an exit strategy for you and your sister.”

“What?”

It was time for him to get off this killing train of thought. If he wanted to obsess over something, it might as well be something useful. “I’m not saying it has to happen right now. I know she won’t leave her friends if she thinks they’re in danger, but there has to be an out for you two in the event that things take a turn.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for starters, you could start learning how to go into hiding. Don’t use your computer to research places to go. Go to the library and read the books there, so the records of what you check out won't exist. Start saving or taking out money from your parent’s estate to horde away, so you can pay cash for everything instead of using ATM cards. I could give you one of my IDs for Elena. You’ll have to get one for yourself. Buy a car ahead of time using cash and have it registered under your fake alias, so it doesn’t raise suspicions. If you steal a car, then you’re just asking for unwanted attention, and make no mistakes. Klaus has eyes and ears everywhere, including law enforcement, so you’re not just on the run from him. You’re on the run from anyone, and you’ll have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice, so have ‘go bags’ ready with the essentials and things you really just can’t leave behind. Forget about everything else. Forget about everyone else. Do not go to family friends . . . that kind of thing.”

He briefly considered it before looking down at his sister. “You're right. She’d never leave if she thought her friends were in danger. She had a chance to do that before the sacrifice, and she wouldn’t do it.” 

Well, he could knock her out and force her to go, but that was wrong, and if he wanted to do this right, then she had to be on board, or she’d just come running back. “Maybe . . . or maybe you’re her brother, so if you tell her it’s what’s best for you, she will.”

His attention came back to me. “She won’t . . . If she thinks I’m in danger, she’ll send me away, not – “

“She doesn’t have to think you’re in danger. She just has to believe that you need her. She doesn’t think about what it’ll mean for you if you lose her and wind up alone. All she thinks about is what it’ll mean for her if she loses you or one of her friends. She only sees things from her perspective, so while she knows on a cerebral level that you’ve lost people – that you’ve actually lost more people than she has, she really only feels the losses she’s had and focuses on those. It’s why she clings so tightly to the people she has left.”

He listened and then did something I didn’t expect. He snorted. “You make her sound like a sociopath.”

No. Glancing at Elena, I corrected him by saying, “Self-centered. I wouldn’t even call her a narcissist, because she doesn’t necessarily want to be the center of attention. She just is because of the nature of what she is in a supernatural world, but she is also totally selfish.”

He seemed amused by that. “You don’t even know her.”

“I know her well enough to know that. Don’t get me wrong. She cares about people that are close to her, but it’s less about you guys and more about how she feels about you. She uses people, like Elijah, Stefan, Damon, and Bonnie, and she doesn’t take their feelings into account. She also has what I consider a weird code of ethics where she really hates pain, suffering, and death for most people, but she’s not opposed to it for everyone, specifically people who have done wrong to her in some way. It’s human, I suppose, to want to strike out at those that have hurt you, but she seems to think that it's only okay for her to do it. If anyone else does, then she has a fit, and I suppose it’s human to not want people around you to do things that are dangerous, because they could get hurt, but she doesn't seem to understand that other people around her don't want her to be hurt for the same reason. It's like only she gets to feel that, and anyone who goes against that is wrong. I think that she has a strong sense of sympathy, but her ability to empathize is severely lacking.”

“And yours isn’t?”

He wasn’t angry. He almost seemed to want to know out of curiosity, maybe as a way to further distance himself from the current plight of the sister next to him. “No, I have empathy enough for the both of us. It’s really the only way I’m able to connect with people because I had an isolated upbringing, so I have to put myself in their shoes to understand why they feel the way they do and can feel it based on how I felt in similar situations . . . what I lack is sympathy. I think both of those are what allow me to be bad sometimes, because I can use one without the other to help me do what I have to do . . . In the right circumstances, I can feel and show compassion. I’m just not very good at it yet. It’s a work in progress.”

“Maybe you’re the sociopath.”

I shrugged. “Maybe I am . . . except for one thing. I feel genuine remorse for some of the things I do, particularly if the other person doesn’t deserve it, but then that all depends on whether I think they deserve it. If I think they do, then I don’t feel bad about it, so who knows?” Getting to my feet, I said, “So, you’re okay to do the night watch?” He looked at Elena and nodded, “And you’ll call me, not – “

His head turned back in my direction as he gave me a somewhat reluctant, “Yeah.”

“And you’ll consider what I said about planning an exit strategy?”

“I might. It’s not just Elena. I’m not sure it’s something I could do either. It’d mean leaving everyone and everything I’ve ever known.”

“It’d also mean a fresh start somewhere else. You could be anyone you wanted to be and do anything you wanted to do without the constant reminder of all the things you’ve lost here. Just make sure you relocate somewhere that doesn’t have any monsters. Stay out of the South and Alaska . . . big cities, towns the size of Mystic Falls . . . uh, I think Klaus said the werewolves he found were in Kansas and the Pacific Northwest, so - ”

He cut me off with a laugh. “Is anywhere safe?”

“Not really, no . . . and they’re nomadic, so they may not be there when you get there, but they could move in after you’re there a while. Just don’t go anywhere that has a lot of missing persons or animal attacks.”

He gave me a more considered nod before looking at the door. “So, what are you going to do . . . I mean about tonight. You have to think this was wrong, right?”

“I do. And I’m not sure how I’m going to respond yet, but I’ll think of something.”


	51. Lying Games

After I left the hospital, I went home to wait for Stefan, but he didn’t show. Damon had gone out looking for him, but Stefan hadn’t been where he’d thought he’d be, and neither was the coffin, or so Damon had said. I wasn’t entirely sure he was telling the truth. Either way, it would appear that he was right and Stefan was going all in on his war with Klaus. Stefan didn’t come home the next night either, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t stayed up most of that night too waiting for him to come back.

On the third night, I was sitting in the same place I had the last two nights. It was dark, silent, and then I heard the door to Stefan’s bedroom open. As the light was flicked on, I pulled the trigger on my crossbow. Good thing Damon was fast. Glaring down at the arrow that was pinning him to the door through the collar of his shirt, he made his displeasure known. “Damnit, Eve, what’d I say about shooting your weapons in the house?!”

“Make sure they’re not pointed at you when I do.” I watched him pull the bolt out of the door and then added, “But in fairness, you knew I was in here and why, so you should’ve expected it.”

Looking down at the tip of the bolt he was holding, he muttered, “I did, or this would’ve gone right to the top of the list of reasons why today is the worst, and that list is hard to top.”

“Why?”

Still sulking, he grumbled, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I pointed out the obvious. “You do, or you wouldn’t have said that.”

“Fine. Then I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Sure, walk into the dark room where you know a girl is armed and then complain when you're nearly shot. “You know, you could’ve knocked. I think you wanted to see if you were faster than me.”

His entire demeanor changed as the truth of that hit home. Looking up at me with a smirk, he responded, “I admit to nothing . . . but I was faster, wasn’t I?”

“So it would seem. Although, if you’re going to stop and be all whiny about every shirt that gets torn, then someday, you’re going to be in some serious trouble.”

“Yeah, well not as much trouble as you’re going to be in if your aim doesn’t get better.”

As he took a couple of steps towards me, I defended myself by saying, “My aim is outstanding.”

“I’m walking proof that’s not true.”

“Or you’re walking proof that I can see a silhouette in the dark and subconsciously recognize that it’s you.”

“Are you saying you missed me on purpose?”

Maybe? I honestly didn't know. I shrugged. “Wanna be my practice dummy the next time I’m doing target practice, so we can find out?”

He opened his mouth to respond, and then relaxed with a smug smile. “If you hit me 10 times out of 10 shots, you can say you were right about missing me on purpose and intended to shoot where you did. If you miss me 10 out of 10, you can say it’s because you don’t want to hurt me.”

“And if it’s 5 out of 10?”

“That mostly means you’re a bad shot half the time, so you wouldn’t do that. If you missed on the first shot, you’d intentionally miss the next 9. If you hit me on the first shot, you’d do whatever you had to do to get all 10.”

Hm. Intriguing. I hadn’t actually considered that. Sometimes his thoughts on my deviousness were more extreme than how I thought I actually was, and it usually happened in the hours and days that followed me doing something dangerous, or when he thought I was going to kill his brother. Right now, we were sort of in the middle of both scenarios even though he’d said he wasn’t going to be mad about what I’d done at the bridge, and I’d said I wasn’t going to kill Stefan. His perception of both circumstances is what was skewing his opinion on my underhandedness, which made him less trusting of me overall, and that reinforced his thoughts that I was up to something that would end with either his brother or me dead, and so on and so forth in an ever spiral downward. Placing my crossbow across my lap as I relaxed, I mumbled, “Well, I might now that you suggested it. That’s not a bad idea.” 

Coming to stand in front of me and handing me back the bolt before placing his hands on the arms of the chair, Damon leaned down to say, “You didn’t eat again today.” 

That’s where he was wrong. “Yes, I have.” I pulled out a small handful of instant coffee packets out of my pocket and said, "I saved these for you."

“Eve, eating Army rations, while you’re camped out in my brother’s room, does not count as eating.”

Right. So, I guess that meant that him drinking blood bags didn’t count as eating. “Sure it does.”

“Where’d you even get them?”

Hm. Good question. I wasn’t entirely sure. A combination of Army surplus stores in Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Maryland? Once I got them, they sort of just went into a pile with the rest. “They weren’t online or anything. I got them at legitimate Army surplus stores.”

He seemed to be enjoying this line of questioning. “And why do you have them, exactly?”

“Well, when you’re on a stake out, you can’t exactly leave to go get food . . . Well, you can’t if you’re the only one on the stake out. If there are two, then one can stay behind to keep watch, while the other gets food.” Hint. Hint.

“Mm hm, and that brings me to my second question. Are you planning to stay in here again all night?”

“The same reasoning applies to sleep. One person makes it much more difficult to watch and sleep.” 

“You need to sleep at some point.”

Hunting a vampire took a lot of dedication. “I have been.”

“15 minutes, when your eyes won’t stay open any longer, isn’t sleep . . . And what about school?”

Stefan was no longer attending school, so why would I lie in wait for him there? “Damon, what’s your point? You only seem to be making one to yourself.”

“Yeah, well you’d get it if you were taking care of yourself, because your brain would be firing on all cylinders, but you’re not, so it’s not, and . . . Eve, you need to stop hunting my brother. I don’t even think you’re that upset about what he did, or at least you haven’t been since you came home from the hospital. You’re just bored.”

Hm. I was bored, or he was? “I think that you’re the one who is bored, and now you’re trying to ruin my fun.”

“How is this fun, Eve? Tell me, because I really don’t understand. This isn’t hunting. We both know it’s not.”

Well, hunting wasn’t always action-packed, or at least it wasn’t when you were a human. “Sure it is. You follow the bodies. Track. Then you research your target, which might also include an extended stake out, and that is where I currently am in the process.” Before he could disagree, I added, “Admittedly, it doesn’t usually take this long for a vampire to show up where I’m expecting him to be, but that’s because usually, my targets don’t know me. In this instance, Stefan knows where I should be and is avoiding those places at the times that I would normally be there, hence me not going to school or sleeping or leaving here until he comes back, most likely at a time when he doesn’t think I’ll be here. I mean, I could track him down, but I’ve exhausted all the places in this town that he could’ve hidden that damn coffin and none of my other leads have paid off, so – “

“I can guarantee you that you don’t even register on the list of things my brother is thinking about right now.”

My eyes narrowed. “He doesn’t have any reason not come back here other than to avoid me. He’d still come back here if all he’d done was piss Klaus off, because this boarding house is his safe haven, and I know it’s not because he is actually concerned that him coming back would impact on what Klaus does to you if he’s here. I told him I’d deal with him when he got home, and I strongly suspect that is why he hasn’t come home.” Leaning my head back against the chair, while I appraised him, I slowly shook my head in disappointment, “I knew you knew where he was.”

“I don’t – “

“Before you finish that sentence, think long and hard about whether you want to lie to me again. There’s playing with the truth, like let’s say you went looking for him and didn’t initially find him, but he found you, then you could say that you didn’t find him even though you know where he is, and there's withholding the truth, and then there’s outright lying, like when I asked if you really had no idea where he was, and you said – “

“No.”

I watched him. There was a reason he stopped me from finishing the reason for why I was I camped out in his brother’s room, and I thought that reason was mild guilt, because he knew where his brother was, and since I was only camped out in Stefan's room, because I couldn't find the owner of said room, then that meant that me being in here for days on end was Damon's fault if he knew where Stefan was. Damon was without a doubt my best lead, and okay, so maybe me being in here to get my lead to crack was a bit manipulative and underhanded, which went hand in hand with what Damon thought of me right now, but really how else was I supposed to find Stefan? Ask Bonnie? Or Imelda? Yeah, I don't think so. Besides, how else could he guarantee that Stefan wasn't concerned about me at all unless he'd talked to Stefan, and Stefan said, 'I don't care what Eve is going to do to me when she sees me again.' 

Maybe he was just guessing, but even if he was guessing, he'd have to admit that at the very least, Stefan would have to consider me a nuisance that he didn’t want in his way, so to say I wasn’t even on a list of things that concerned Stefan wasn’t necessarily true. Damon was overplaying it, and that’s either because he really wanted me out of this room and was willing to say anything to make that happen for my own good, or because he’d tried to convince Stefan to come home and had done so by saying that he'd keep me out of his brother's way. Either way, he wanted me out of this room, and for that reason alone, I wasn't going to leave until I knew for sure whether he was telling me the truth or not. We kept one another in the dark on the things. We didn't lie to one another, and I wasn't going to make this easy on him if he was. “Well, then I guess that in the absence of any other options, I’m staying right where I am.”

Trying a different tactic, Damon asked, “And what are you going to do when he actually shows? I mean, what would you have done if I’d been him?”

Well, I did have the bathtub three-quarters full. I was thinking I might shoot Stefan in both his shoulders in just the right place so that his arms would be useless and then do the same thing to his thighs to weaken his legs. Wood really hurt them, like Stefan would be able to feel being shot by wooden arrows more than a human could, and that would hurt a human a lot. Plus, until that wood was gone, he wouldn’t heal. He might bleed out until he desiccated, but he wouldn’t die, and I didn’t want him dead. Maybe I was just considering drowning him repeatedly until he felt the fear of being drowned. Drown. Wait for him to revive. Do it again. Wash. Rinse. Repeat until he was scared. 

In my opinion, he needed to feel a good dose of fear to break through that anger that was fueling him at the moment, and what better fear for him to feel than the same fear that Elena'd had. He needed to be reminded that there was more to fear than death, because he clearly didn’t fear that. He’d obviously lived a fairly charmed kind of life if he didn’t realize that there were a whole host of bad things that could be done to him before death ever happened, and anything I considered would be tame compared to the torture that Klaus could inflict upon him. Better me than Klaus, right?

On top of all of that, I’d had to stand around and watch him mentally torture and then kill way too many people in the time I was with he and Klaus on the road, but I wasn’t under the same restrictions now, and I was fed up with all his nonsense. How he was acting wasn’t just leading to his own downfall. He was dragging everyone he knew down with him. I lifted a shoulder in response to Damon’s question, and Damon looked over his shoulder towards the bathroom where the tub was before saying, “If you won’t say it, then it’s too dark for you to be doing.” Before I could argue that, his eyes came back to me as he said, “I’m not saying you can’t do it, but can you live with yourself after you’ve made your point?” 

Yes. Probably. Maybe. Well, I would have if he hadn’t started guiltting me about it before I even did anything. You know, he wouldn’t do that if it were anyone other than his brother, and I was starting run out of ideas on what to do about Stefan. Damon certainly didn’t appear to be coming up with anything, or if he did, he wasn’t sharing what those plans were. Were we just supposed to scold Stefan to death? Talking didn’t work with him. “You’re hiding things from me.”

With a sigh, his shoulders fell, and he finally relented. “Maybe . . . but can you blame me?”

“I am a tad extreme.”

Breathing out a silent chuckle, Damon responded, “Yeah, you are.”

“Your brother’s a problem.”

“And 6 months ago, I was the problem. What would you have done about me?”

I knew that vampire’s lived their lives on a never-ending rollercoaster of emotion and morality, and I understood why. I also knew that Damon was no saint. In fact, he was far from it. “Well, what did I say after you killed Jeremy?”

“That you’d find a way to get even.” 

Yeah, that’s what’d sparked off our little disagreement about me going after Katherine. “But I also said that you had to accept responsibility for what you did and not make any excuses for it, that you had to live with the consequences, and that would be a start.”

“That was for Elena, not you.”

The faintest of smiles touched my lips as my fingertips found their way to the hole I’d made in his shirt, and I focused on that, while I said, “That’s the way it is for everyone, Damon. You were just faster at getting there with me than you were with Elena, so you had to be told what to do with her. When you came to my room that night and told me what you did, you accepted responsibility for it. You told me that being drunk wasn’t an excuse. You wanted me to tell you I hated you and drive a stake through your heart, and you were maybe being a little dramatic, but the remorse you felt was real.” My eyes flicked up to him before they went back to the hole in his shirt as I added, “And maybe that was because you crushed Elena by doing what you did, so that’s the real reason you felt bad about it, but that you were able to feel bad says something, and at least I know that you’ll think twice about doing that again even if it’s only to people who are important to someone who is important to you.”

“Except I then killed your Dad by doing pretty much the same thing.”

My smile grew as I said, “Yeah, but you made sure to point out that he was wearing his ring, which means you were conscious of it being there, and then you left to find me a better family and came back to give me a lecture on why I should be more upset with you than I was.”

He returned my smile as he quietly said, “You mean at all.”

“Yeah . . . yeah, that was back when I knew he’d come back.” A hint of sadness tinged my voice, and I took a deep breath before saying, “But the point is that you learned from your past mistake and didn’t make it again, or at least not in quite the same way.”

“Or you let me off with a pass that I didn’t deserve.”

I lifted my shoulder in a slight shrug before dropping his collar and looking away from him. “Maybe . . . and maybe I’m right too. Even now, you don’t want me to give you any credit for it, and I think that says something . . . But the difference with Stefan is that he took off instead of facing the consequences of what he did. He hasn’t shown any remorse for what he did to anyone that his actions had an impact on that night, not Elena or me or Caroline or you or even Tyler . . . and from my perspective, that means that what happened to Elena and Caroline is secondary to his own agenda. He’s still putting himself first, so he hasn’t learned from it, and he could do it again.” After a brief pause, I looked back up at Damon and said, “I don’t know if any of that makes sense. That’s just the way I see it.”

“If I tell you where – “

I quickly exclaimed, “I knew you knew where he was. You lied to me.”

He seemed more amused than I thought he should as he said, “Right, and you’ve never lied to me.”

“Nope . . . I play with the truth, but it’s always the truth.”

“Always?”

“Yep.”

“Uh huh, and what about the time when you told me you were going to wear your Dad’s ring during the ritual even though it was so obvious that you weren’t?”

I was going to respond, but then shut my mouth. I had done that. “Well, there’s a reason I play with the truth. I’m not very good at lying.”

Grinning, Damon said, “You’re really not.“

“Then can we dispense with notion that I’m deceitful at every turn and that you have to lie to me about where your brother is, because you’re trying to protect him from me. I’m really not that bad.” Damon glanced over his shoulder at the bathtub once more before exhaling another silent laugh. When his attention returned to me, I muttered, “Well, I’m not exactly a saint either.”

He leaned closer and whispered, “And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I know you have something in mind – something you want him to feel to get your point across – you need to find another way to get there.” 

My shoulders fell as I considered what he’d said. "Any ideas on what that might be?"

"Nope. That's between you and my brother. I have to handle my own issues with Stefan."

"And does it have to be without violence, because I really think that's the only way I know how to make these kinds of points."

Giving me something of a soft smile, he answered, "You're a smart woman. I think you can find another way. I'm violent enough for both of us."

That instantly got my attention. "Ooh, what'd you do."

With a chuckle, he responded, "You're not supposed to be impressed. You're supposed to hold me to a higher standard."

"And I do. In my own way."

I wasn't expecting him to agree with me, but after a brief moment, he grew a little more serious before nodding. "Yeah, you do . . . If it means you won't lock yourself away for days on end, then I won't lie to you again, but you have got to stop keeping things from me too."

I was pleasantly surprised that he'd surmised the unspoken reason for why I'd stayed in here so long. It felt better to know he knew than to think he hadn't - more honest. "I'll try?"

"I'll take it . . . and I'll let you in on what I'm planning, but you have got to promise you won't get involved."

Well, that hardly seemed ideal, but I did want to know. "Until you give me the go ahead?"

"I won't."

"I don't like making deals with no wiggle room. Why agree to something that's set in stone when you have no idea what may happen? If I'm not needed, I won't be, but if I am, and I've agreed to something that says that even in those circumstances I can't act, then all I can do is stand around and watch everything go up in flames."

"All right, fine."

"Really?"

"Yeah. You wore me down."

The genuine happiness I felt at that was a little hard to hide. "Excellent."

Damon smiled at my enthusiasm, and leaned closer, but then his posture went rigid. I automatically tightened my grip on the crossbow in my hands, but before I could react, he put his hand over mine to keep me from doing anything rash as he smoothly transitioned into a safer conversation, “And in the meantime, there are other people who need your attention.” I felt someone else come into the room behind him, and Damon stood taller. “That’s why I came to get you. You have a visitor.”

How much of that had Tyler heard? The last thing I needed on top of everything else was one of Klaus’s spies giving Klaus a reason to start paying more attention to what I was doing. My response was almost immediate. “What do you want?”

Stepping forward, Tyler quickly answered, “Look, I know I screwed up. That’s why I’m here.”

I sat a little taller in my chair as I said, “Well, it’s going to take more than a bunch of flowers or whatever Mommy’s money can buy to make things right with Caroline.”

“Don’t you think I know that? I had no control over – “

“I know. Believe me. I understand. It was Klaus, and I don’t blame you for what happened, but that doesn’t mean that any of us can afford to trust you. You’re like the Manchurian Candidate, a sleeper agent that’s just waiting for the right phrase from your master to activate you, and then you’ll rip all our hearts out. On top of that, you allowed Klaus to give your girlfriend the best birthday present she could’ve ever gotten.” 

If I was a little sore about that, because I’d wanted my birthday weekend to be the thing to cheer her up, Tyler went from looking like he understood my indignation and felt like he deserved it to downright angry that something may have happened with his girlfriend behind his back. “What are you talking about?”

“If you remember, she was hung up on being dead and quite upset about it. He showed her that she’s not as dead as she thought and made her realize she really wants to live . . . that’s something that money just can’t buy.”

He took a step in my direction that Damon met to block him as Tyler angrily asked, “Did she say something to you?”

Climbing up to sit on the arm of the chair, so I could see around Damon, I answered, “Yeah, but she didn’t have to say anything. There was Caroline before and Caroline now, and she is definitely different, but it’s not just because she doesn’t trust you anymore . . . It may have been his doing, but he also got the save, so that’s what she remembers, and what he said to her made an impact.”

“What’d he say?!”

That was between she and I and totally confidential. “You’ll have to ask her.” 

“I can’t. She won’t see me.”

“Yeah, well, she’s scared of you, but can you blame her?”

Continuing to ride the ups and downs of the emotions he was feeling, Tyler went from jealous to contrite in almost no time at all. “No . . . and that’s why I need your help. You have to help me fix this.” Whenever someone told me I had to do something, I was always tempted to say I don’t _have_ to do anything, and sometimes I did, but this wasn’t really the time for it, and he beat me to it by adding, “You promised my uncle – “

“I’d look out for you. Yeah, I remember. I was there. Something tells me he wasn’t talking about girl trouble.”

“Maybe not, but I bet he did mean not letting me be mind-controlled by a sadistic asshole.” 

I brightened up a little. “So you’re here because you want to break the sire bond, not find ways to get back in Caroline’s good books.”

“Well, yeah . . . and I sort thought that by breaking the sire bond, it’d go a long way in showing her I’m still me. I know she can’t trust me right now. I don’t want her to until this is gone, but I thought it’d be a start.”

I relaxed as I thought through it. I honestly had no idea how to even begin to break a sire bond. With normal vampires, they loved the vampire who turned them before they were turned, and even then it didn’t lead to there being a sire bond most of the time, so what made those vampires different, and how did you even begin to cure someone of being a literal slave to love? Maybe with hybrids it would be a little easier. 

We knew the reason they were sire bonded had nothing to do with love. Tyler said it often enough. He hated changing into a werewolf, and being a hybrid meant he didn’t have to do it anymore. It was still really strange to me that despite him wanting to not be sire bonded to Klaus anymore, if Klaus told him to bite Caroline again, he would. Why wasn’t him not wanting to be sired enough? I guess his gratitude was stronger on a subconscious level than he could control or was even aware of most of the time. “I don’t think I can help you.” Tyler was going to say something, but I stopped him before he could. “I just don’t have the mental fortitude to train you through something like that . . . but I might know someone who is.”


	52. Everyone Has Some Apologizing to Do

_”So, I was thinking that to make this work, we might need a head start before anyone knows we’re gone. What do you think about telling people that you’re the one who took me out of town, when you’re the one who is really staying behind?”_

Uh, given my present company, it was probably best not to discuss this with Jeremy now. _”That’s not a bad idea. Go over some of the final details and get back to me later.”_

_”You can’t talk right now, huh?”_

I looked at Damon who was actively listening in on our conversation over the phone, and it confirmed that even though I’d stepped away from the group, what was being said could still be heard. _”No, but I’ll meet up with you later to talk about it.”_

He didn’t sound too disappointed by it. _”Okay . . . and I have something else I found that I want to run by you.”_

I told him that was fine and got him off the phone as quickly as possible. Before Damon could ask what that was about, my eyes flicked to the back of Tyler’s head to let him know that I couldn’t talk about it around one of Klaus’s mind-controlled minions. Damon nodded to let me know he’d let it go for now, and even though we were supposed to be filling one another in on more of what we were doing, there was a part of me that didn’t want to tell him about it. You don’t tell people when you’re helping others with an exit strategy, because the more people who knew, the less likely it would be for it to remain a secret. If Stefan wanted to know where Elena was, Damon probably tell him because of their bond that took a beating and still came back strong every time it happened. Or maybe he wouldn’t tell him anything. 

He had kept me a secret from his brother for quite a long time, and apparently, they weren’t as in sync on this whole coffin thing as I’d thought. He’d stolen the coffin from Stefan after the Wickery Bridge incident only to have it stolen back from him yesterday – most likely with the help of the witches in this town. Ugh, witches. Jeremy needed to keep them in mind too. If I stayed behind to act as Elena, then my blood could be used to track he and Elena down when it was inevitably discovered that I was not Elena. Other than me, there no other blood relatives of theirs left, so it was just me that could lead to their downfall . . . I’d figure something out.

When I got to the front porch, Tyler turned to look at me over his shoulder. “What was that about?”

Wanting to get rid of the mental shackles that kept you chained to a fiery overlord was a far cry from actually removing them. I smirked before responding, “There are just some things that you don’t talk about in the presence of rat-faced weasels.”

Tyler immediately took offense. “Hey, I said I was sorry. That's why we're doing this, so he can never use me against any of you again.”

“Who said I was only talking about you.”

It was Bill’s turn to look at me, but I was saved by the door as it finally swung open . . . or maybe not. Liz immediately caught a glimpse of Bill’s bandaged hand and turned her eyes on me. “Eve, what did I tell you.”

That if she found out I burnt anyone else, she’d make sure that assault charges were filed against me. Summoning his charm, Damon intervened, “Now, Liz, we’re all friends here. Bill’s not going to be pressing charges today or any other day, isn’t that right, Bill?” 

His free hand clamped down over Bill’s shoulder, and Bill flinched before saying, “I’m just here to see my daughter.”

He’d already been in town for Caroline’s birthday, so Liz was quick to understand what was happening. “You spent the last couple of days with _our_ daughter. I take it this means you remember – “

Bill finished the sentence for her. “Everything? I do . . . and I’m here to make things right.”

We’d nabbed him on his way out of town, so she’d had to keep her anger at Bill contained while he was here, because he couldn’t remember doing it. Looking like a weight had been lifted, Liz crossed her arms over her chest, and her gaze traveled over to Tyler. “I’m not sure that the best start was to bring him here.”

Tyler quickly pointed his thumb over his shoulder and said, “Eve’s locked and loaded, because she doesn’t trust me either.” 

Liz’s eyes went to Damon, and there was a definite softening as she said, “Can I count on you to keep things here civil, while I’m at work?”

I sort of liked that he’s the only one that she trusted out of the four of us. I think what I liked is that she recognized a kindred spirit in him. She worked all the time and was a single Mom, so she didn’t have time for many friends outside of work. She was also the boss, so she couldn’t exactly be friends with the other officers. She was stronger than Damon emotionally. Maybe that’s because she was human and could hide the knocks that life had given her, whereas he tended to wear his heart on his sleeve, because he was a vampire and couldn’t hide how he felt, but the personal difficulties they’d encountered over the years were similar. 

That meant that they had more in common than you’d think even though they were on opposite sides of this cosmic battle that Liz had been raised to believe in from the time she was a kid. Tossing a look down at me, Damon said, “Well, I have something else I need to do, so I’m going to leave this in Eve’s capable hands.” Looking back up to Liz, he asked, “Walk you to your car?”

The something else he needed to do was to steal back the coffin he’d stolen from Stefan. His plan to end this war wouldn’t work if he didn’t get that back and have leverage over both his brother and Klaus. If he was going to do that, I could deal with this. To reassure her, I said, “I can’t guarantee civility, but I can guarantee that your house will still be standing at the end of this.” 

A smile threatened to break out on her face as she reached for her Sheriff’s jacket behind the door. Stepping outside and stopping to look at me as she passed, Liz gave me a candid, “Be nice.” Glancing at Tyler and Bill, she added, “But not too nice. Just look after Caroline. If she wants them to go, then make sure they go.” I don’t know if she meant it this way or not, but I interpreted that to mean that I had free reign to do whatever it took to make that happen. I nodded in understanding, and that smile finally came through as she patted me on the upper arm and walked away with Damon. 

As soon as they were off the porch, I turned and gestured towards the open door. “Shall we?” 

Tyler and Bill both seemed hesitant, so I took the lead and walked in ahead of them. I got to the living room and called for Caroline. It wasn’t very long before you could hear her voice coming from the direction of the hallway that lead to her room. “Hey, so where are we going tonight. I need to know, so I can plan what to wear. If it’s – “ She stopped mid-sentence when she came around the corner and saw Tyler standing in the room behind me. “What’s he doing here?” Just like her mother, Caroline’s eyes then went to her Dad’s hand, and she added, “And what’d I say about hurting my Dad, Eve?”

It’d proven just as difficult to remove the compulsion as it had been to put it there in the first place. The only easy thing about it was that we didn’t have to wait days for the vervain to leave his system, because we’d already known when we compelled him the first time that we were going to add vervain to the town’s water supply, and we’d known that every time he came back to Mystic Falls, he might be a pain in the ass again, so Damon had compelled him to drink bottled water and to think that salt was vervain, so Bill might have higher sodium levels than normal, but he didn’t have any vervain in his system even though he thought he did. 

“Well, if I recall correctly, and I’m fairly certain that I do, you said that you’d put me in the hospital if I put him in the hospital, but this time I came prepared, because he’s a bit of a handful, so I just patched him up myself. No hospital visits necessary.” When her attention came back to me, she seemed less than enthused, and I added. “We fixed him . . . I mean, removing the compulsion wouldn’t take at first, because he pulled his– “  
Taking a step back as her eyes went to her father in recognizable fear, she murmured, “He remembers?”

“He does.” Bill went to step around me to go comfort her, and she took another step back, so I pivoted to put a hand on his chest and keep him from getting any closer. “Just wait.” The look on his face said he really didn’t like being told what to do by teenagers. “If you’re really here to make things right, then you need to give her time to process all of this. There’s the you who hasn’t hurt her, and that’s who she’s been with the last couple of days, and then there’s the you who has hurt her . . . which is pretty much you right now. Give her a few seconds to process that both versions of you are really one and the same. She needs it. Anyone would.”

If Caroline was going to come to his defense and tell me to let him through, that would’ve been the moment for her to do it, but she didn’t. I tossed a look at her over my shoulder, and it would appear that she was planning to stay behind me and utilize the deer in headlights strategy. How could anyone hurt her was beyond me, let alone a man who was supposed to be her father, but then he was also the same father who essentially abandoned her and replaced his presence in her life with presents, which is why so much of her self-worth was tied up in clothes and money – external things instead of who she was as a person. I quietly asked, “Are you okay?” and it seemed to snap her out of her daze. Her eyes flitted in my direction, and I said, “Look at this way. Anything he says or does now is real . . . the way it was before may have been easier, but it was fake.”

Her expression changed into one of her more determined ones that I really quite admired, and then because I was the one she was least intimidated by in that moment, she leveled that look on me. “And that is exactly why you shouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

If she needed to use me to reclaim some of her inner strength back, then I was fine with it to a certain extent, and I actually got her point. “I know.”

“I was just getting used to the idea that I really had my Dad back, and now – “

No reason to go overboard on it though. It’d only serve to make her lose sight of the intended purpose of this meeting. “Remember what I said after your Mom found out the first time?”

I was specifically referring to the part where I told her that nothing that would stop Liz from protecting her regardless of whether or not Caroline was a vampire. Caroline stopped short and before slowly nodding. Her eyes made their way back up to her Dad, and I took a step back to get out of their way as she quietly said, “You heard what happened before you got here?”

“That’s why I’m here.” 

Letting a bit of her fragility show through, Caroline countered by saying, “But the last time you were in town, you – “

“I made a terrible mistake.” Using the silence that followed his admission, Bill added, “Sweetheart, if these last few days have proven anything, it’s that you’re still my Care Bear. I don’t think I would’ve had to have my memory erased to eventually see that.” He threw me a brief look before saying, “But it’s true, and it has rather rudely been pointed out to me that when I found out, I didn’t even take the time to find out how it happened.” His voice softened as he said, “You weren’t given a choice on whether you were given vampire blood. It was made for you without your knowledge. You died alone in your hospital room.” He paused to clear the emotion out of his voice before saying, “You must’ve been so scared, and when you woke up, nobody was there to tell you what was happening, the change you’d undergone, what was happening to you, and for that . . for not being there and not teaching you about the way this world really works . . . I’ll never forgive myself . . . and for what I did to you after I did find out, I don’t deserve to be forgiven, but I am truly sorry.” 

Not bad. Caroline blinked back a couple of tears, and Bill looked over my head at Tyler before focusing once more on his daughter. “And this young man knows he made a mistake too. I knew you were down the last couple of days because of a rough patch you two have been having, but I had no idea the extent of the reason why. You almost died again, and I wasn’t there again, but I’m here now, and if you give us both a chance, we’ll do everything in our power to make it up to you.”

She finally broke and launched herself forward into her father’s arms with an almost inaudible, “Daddy,” and I looked back at Tyler, because this had suddenly gotten awkward. I think my expression asked him what we were supposed to do. Like were we supposed to leave for this kind of thing? He shrugged, and then tilted his head beside him, so I took another few steps back until I was standing next to him. 

As soon as I got there, he nudged me with his elbow and gave me a nod to say ‘thanks.’ Poor guy. He had no idea what was ahead of him. I’m fairly certain Bill knew what had to be done, but neither of us had really gone into the details with Tyler, not that Tyler couldn’t figure it out if he really thought about it, or maybe he couldn’t. He was really more of a socially intellectual person than an actually intellectual person, so maybe he didn’t realize how much this was going to hurt, or maybe he was just in denial to the point that he hadn’t even let it enter his head. I failed miserably at giving him a smile as I nodded a ‘you’re welcome,’ in return. This was going to suck.


	53. The Mediator

“Hey! Back off!” I pulled Bill away from Tyler and grabbed the axe out of his hand. I know that I’d aptly demonstrated that the mind had a more difficult time being in control when the body was in pain, and one way to get around both issues with Tyler having to voluntarily break every bone in his body was to use what Tyler was against him by using his heightened emotions to force the change, but this was too heavy-handed. “Let’s get one thing straight. The only reason I woke you from your metaphorical sleep was so you could teach him some of that mental fortitude you have. If the right way to do this was to threaten, beat, and scare him into changing, I could’ve done that. I got you involved, because I expect more from you Obi Wan.”

Bill stood his ground. “If you don’t have the stomach to see this through, then I suggest you leave.” 

I was so tired of the condescension that oozed from every pore of this man’s being. I’d only helped them convince Caroline to go, because I’d thought that maybe part of what was making this so difficult for Tyler was that he was too self-conscious about the change to do it in front of her. Sure, he’d changed into his wolf form in front of her the first time, but he hadn’t had a choice then. This time he did, and he didn’t want her to see him changing. It’d be like having his girlfriend watch him vomit or lose control of his bowels, and most people, let alone teenage boys would be too proud for that, but if I’d known Bill was going to act like this as soon as she’d gone, then maybe I wouldn’t have been so quick to help them turn her away. “I’m not going anywhere, and you are going to find another way. Appeal to his better nature.”

There was a right way to do this and a wrong way. He just wasn’t being patient enough to find the right way, and it may literally come back to bite him in the ass. We had no idea what the differences would be with Tyler being a hybrid now. Typically, a werewolf had to change on a full moon and what followed was a path of carnage, but with Tyler being a hybrid, who could change at will, whatever emotions he triggered in Tyler to force the change might stick with Tyler as a wolf, and it was one thing to have a man-shredding wolf on your hands. It was an entirely different thing to have that man-shredding wolf targeting you out of anger or fear. It might mean the difference between Tyler staying in those chains and breaking free of them. 

I gave Bill what I considered to be ample time to respond and then turned away from him saying, “Fine, then you’re off the team. We’ll figure this out on our own.”

Knowing that I intended to let him go, so we could regroup and try this again later, Tyler said, “It’s okay, Eve. Maybe he’s right. You don’t have to stay. You can go.” 

Bill wasn’t right. If I left and Tyler didn’t change into a werewolf, then I seriously suspected that Bill would follow through on the threat he just issued. Killing Tyler to protect Caroline was an option for Bill that probably carried some legitimate weight considering what Tyler had already done to her. The flip side was that if he carried on the way he had been and Tyler did change, then Bill might die, and I didn’t like the guy, but I didn’t exactly want to be the one who had to knock on Caroline’s door with an arm and a leg and say, ‘Here’s what’s left of your Dad. Sorry, I didn’t stay behind and keep Tyler from ripping him apart.’ They needed a mediator, and right now that was me. “No, you can do this, Tyler. You just don’t believe it yet, because you haven’t done it voluntarily. Once you do, you’ll prove to yourself that you can, and – “

“Look out!”

In my profession, if someone tells you to look out or duck or move or anything that says you are in some serious shit, the first thing you do is drop. You know you don’t have time to look for whatever it is that’s coming, because vampires are so fast, so you do the fastest thing you can to change your location and buy yourself a second or two is to let gravity have its way with you, so I fell. On the way down, I felt the whoosh of air above my head that told me something had been swung in my direction. Landing on my knees, I turned in time to dodge, if not completely get out of the way of, a brick swung down in my direction. It struck my shoulder, and I felt my collar bone pop, but managed to take the handle of the axe and hit him in the stomach to make him drop the brick. “This is not what I was talking about when I said appeal to his better nature!” Even if the Incredible Hulk was a superhero, the last person you wanted to be was whoever pissed him off enough for him to change.

While Bill was doubled over, he picked up a wooden object that was lying against the wall next to him, stood and approached. I blocked the first strike, but my left shoulder wasn’t really up for it, so I still took a glancing blow to the left side of my head, brought the axe handle up in front of me with both hands and with a rapid flick, whacked him in the side. He grunted, took a step back, and then came back to continue his assault. He tried to hit me again and again with . . . what the hell was that? Could be a broom. Could be a sledgehammer for all I knew. This place was full of junk just lying around the place. I mean where the hell had the axe come from anyway?

I blocked what I could, but with the limited use of my arm, I didn’t block everything, and all it took was a direct knock on the top of my head for lightening to flash across my vision and an immediate headache to emerge. Fair is fair. He owed me for the role I played in his compulsion, but I would argue that a broken bone and concussion were both more damaging than a measly old burn to the hand. 

I took a knock to the left side, hit the ground and immediately went from disliking to hating the guy standing above me as he brought the handle of whatever the hell he was using to try and club me down on my injured shoulder. I rolled onto my back, so I could block any more attacks, and he brought his foot back to kick me in the side. I took the kick as best I could, prevented him from striking me again by jabbing the end of the axe handle into his stomach, and then thought two things almost at once as he stumbled back a couple of steps. ‘Swipe his legs out from under him, roll to your knees, and swing the axe down through his skull,’ and ‘Behave, he’s a human.’ It left me open for a another blow to my side, and I felt something crack. 

I got the basic gist of what was happening. I think Bill had wanted to knock me out, so he could finish this the way he wanted, but he hadn’t, and now we were at a point where he saw this as an opportunity that he could seize to get his way. The fact that I wasn’t a part of his little plan meant I was selling it to Tyler by my reaction or lack thereof, and I needed to put an end to this before it got out of hand. My foot went out, and I kicked Bill as hard as I could in the knee, but maybe it was too little too late.

One second Bill was yelling out in pain as I dislocated his kneecap. The next, the noise in the room was swallowed whole and replaced by an earth-shattering roar that came from near the top of my head. It was followed by a giant fur ball that sprung over me and knocked Bill out of view. Oops. My timing on taking out one of his legs couldn't have been worse.

Ignoring the calls for help, I slowly got to my knees. A few moments later, I used the axe as a staff to get to my feet, and then I turned my eyes on the disaster to my left. I seriously considered walking out and leaving Bill to his own devices. The first time the wolf got a good bite in on one of Bill’s forearms, I felt nothing except a sense of satisfaction. Bones crunched, another scream. He was clawed with those razor sharp talons and screamed again. Okay, I should probably do something to stop this. 

The wolf was totally focused on Bill, so as I slowly approached from the side, it didn’t register that I was there. Taking the axe, I brought it over my shoulder and then swung the broadside of the axe into the side of the wolf’s head as hard as I could. I’m not sure who yelped in pain louder when it connected, me or the wolf. The only good thing about being injured at this point was that my adrenaline was already starting to kick in, so while I’d only managed to knock the wolf a couple of feet off of Bill, I was able to react when the wolf then changed direction and launched himself at me. 

Falling to my knees, another small cry left my lips at the pain I felt in my shoulder and ribs when I rapidly leaned back to flatten myself against the ground, but he sailed right over me. I pulled my custom-made automatic dart gun, and he landed. I shot him twice over the top of my head before his body could turn to charge again. Getting to my knees and spinning to face the wolf, I shot it in the chest two more times, and then reached down to grab the axe that I’d dropped next to me, because he might be slower with 4 darts, but not slow enough to stop. He barreled into me and knocked me onto my back again, but I’d brought the axe handle up to block those teeth from tearing into me. He gnawed on that a total of twice before snapping it in half, and using my right hand, I immediately took the pointy end of one of the halves and shoved it up under his chin to keep that mouth closed. 

He yelped of course, and it instantly made me feel bad, so as he started pulling and shaking his head as a means to try and get away, it was with alarm that I yelled, “Tyler stop,” and he did, but it was to look at me and growl in indignation, and I understood it. I really did. He’d just broken every bone in his body in record time to help me, and I’d belted him upside the head with an axe. “Come on, you did this to protect me, and now look at what you’re trying to do to me.” He gave a pitiful look and whimpered again before trying to pull away from me, and I had to yell, “You’re going to hurt yourself worse! Just stop!” He froze and gave me another pleading look, more whimpers. “I’ll let you go, but you can’t attack me . . . You can’t kill Caroline’s Dad either.” 

A sharp whine for help left him, and I sighed. I felt like an asshole. “I’m sorry, Tyler . . . I really am.” I pulled out the makeshift stake that was impaling his face and we had a bit of a stare off to see what the other would do. I finally broke the ice by saying the only thing I could. “What you did for me just now Tyler . . . I think it might be one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me . . . You put me first, above you, above anyone . . . so thank you for that.” 

I didn’t know how much of this was getting through. He was really more animal than man right now. The only thing separating him from being entirely an animal was that he should be able to understand every word I said. He hadn’t killed me yet, so I took that as a positive sign. There were a few moments when I thought this could go either way. I guess if I was going to die, it’d be better if he killed me than if Bill did. I was wearing my ring and because of that really quite grateful that I hadn’t had a chance to make a new anti-magic medicine bag yet. I might have to rethink that. The moments of uncertainty on how this would end passed when the wolf hovering over me ducked his head and licked my cheek. I was immediately confused. He was supposed to be a wild beast whose sole enjoyment was found in the ripping and tearing of flesh. 

“Did you just – “ He did it again. “Tell me your just testing me out to see how much of a tasty morsel I’d be and not – “ I had to shut my mouth and turn my face when I was attacked by a frenzy of licks until I finally laughed out, “Stop it . . . Stop . . . If you don’t stop, I’m telling Caroline.” He quit, and I opened an eye to peek up at him. When I saw he wasn’t going to do it anymore, I turned my face to look up at him. “So, we’re good?” 

I guess we were, because he let out a soft groan as he stretched and then plopped down with his front paws draped over my torso. His eyes immediately went to the bloody mess that was Caroline’s psychotic father on the other side of the room, and he issued a low growl. The meaning was clear if Bill was conscious enough to heed the warning. He’d better not get too close, or tired from the wolfsbane or not, Tyler would finish the job he’d started. Maybe Tyler was more of a friend than I’d thought, or maybe he would be now, or maybe we would never speak of this and just let things go back to being the way they were.

Speaking of Bill, I tilted my head back to look for him and saw how much blood he was losing. Someone should probably help him. I didn’t really feel like being that person, but I suppose I had to be. I was the only one here right now. With a sigh, I started to move out from under the wolf pinning me down, and he growled. I immediately threw him a look. Maybe he was just protecting his lunch until that wolfsbane wore off . . . nah, I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt. 

He was an animal right now, so he was either trying to protect his lunch, or he didn’t want me getting too close to Bill even though Bill wasn’t up for doing much harm at the moment. The wolf didn’t really understand that. All he knew was that he wanted me away from Bill, because Bill was dangerous. “I’d love nothing more than to take a nap and sleep this headache off, but it’d be more than a little embarrassing if you changed back where you are right now, Mr. No-Pants, wouldn’t it?” I tried to move out from under his paws again. 

Another little growl followed by a small whimper as if he was asking me to stay where he thought it was safe. Why did I have to be such a sucker for animals? I stopped with another small sigh. “I have to go check on him. You can either stay here, or come with me, but if you come with me, no biting. Do you understand me?” He looked from me to Bill to me to Bill to me and then whimpered again, like he was unsure about all of this before slowly rising to his feet. 

With my adrenaline quickly subsiding, I was able to roll away from him at what felt like a smidge faster than a snail’s pace before getting to my knees. Standing was going to be a problem, but it seemed like a better idea than crawling. I got a knee up and used that to give me enough leverage to stand before stumbling over to Bill aware that the wolf was following me. Looking down at Bill, I took note of the fact that he was unconscious. Must’ve passed out from the pain. I looked around for something I could use as a tourniquet. He was losing most of his blood from his arm. 

I stumbled back to where I’d been and bent down at the knees to pick up the half of the axe handle that was no longer attached to the axe and went back to Bill before taking a Swiss Army knife out of my pocket, so I could cut a strip of cloth from the bottom of my flannel shirt, wrapped the cloth around the bleeding arm, stuck the stick in the cloth, and then turned the stick until the cloth was so tight it cut off the blood flow to the lower part of his arm. Maybe if it was on there too long, he’d lose the arm, but I didn’t really care. Better that than death, and he was a dick, so it’d probably serve him right. Maybe he’d lose that arm anyway. It was sort of lose and just hanging there as it was. 

He was also bleeding out from a pretty substantial claw mark that went from his shoulder down to his stomach. He wasn’t disemboweled, and I couldn’t see any internal organs, or bones . . . eh, peeking through a tear in the shirt, I thought maybe I saw a rib or two. I took off my jacket and used the rest of what was left of my flannel shirt as a compress. The pain from that is what eventually woke him up with a startled cry, one that turned into a full-fledged scream of horror when he saw Tyler standing over my shoulder. Of course Tyler didn’t make it easy on him. His teeth were bared. He was snarling and snapping. If there was ever an embodiment of the face of danger, that was it.

I looked at the wolf over my shoulder and tapped him on the nose. “No. What did I say?”

It startled him, and he went from focusing on Bill to looking at me. I wouldn’t say he was sheepish in the slightest. Maybe a little confused, so I spelled it out for him. “No biting, which you’re totally building towards right now. No killing . . . The way you're going, you’re gonna scare him to death.” He licked his nose and then sat down in what I would call a huff before throwing another small growl in Bill’s direction. Sure that he wasn’t going to attack, I turned back to Bill, so I could stuff my jacket under his feet to elevate them. “You’re in shock, literally, and this is just about the worst advice I can give you right now, because the thought alone is going to make that heart of yours pump the blood out of you even faster, but you’re gonna have to stay here with him, while I go call Liz.”

“You can’t be serious. No. You can’t leave me with – “

I stopped him there. “Hey!” With a finger pointed in his face, I continued, “The only person you have to blame for this is yourself. It isn’t his fault. It isn’t my fault. It’s yours. You chose for it to go down this way, and now you have to live with the consequences of your actions. Thanks to you, I am unable to drag you upstairs, which means you are going to have to stay here, and stay conscious, so you can hold this over your wounds and stop the bleeding. He’s staying here, because I am not letting him out in his current state.”

Resting his head back on the ground, Bill gave a drowsy shake of his head before finally saying, “Well at least lock him back up before you go.”

Those chains might be able to hold Tyler now with the extra wolfsbane in his system, but there was one small problem with that. “Yeah, well he’s not going to do that willingly, and I’m not going to chance my own safety for your peace of mind.” Slowly getting to my feet, I went back to where I’d had my little scuffle with Tyler and bent down to pick up my dart gun muttering, “You know you’re the real monster here, right? None of my injuries were caused by him.”

He deadpanned, “You’re bleeding,” but I waved that off as I came back to him. 

“Mere flesh wounds from his claws.” I handed him the gun and said, “Consider this your peace of mind, but remember, even though he may be slower than normal, he’s still faster than you on a good day, and he’s not going to take his eyes off of you, so if he sees you point this at him, you’re done. Only use it if there is no other option. You’ll need to empty the clip for him to go down and stay down, but I don’t think he’ll attack you again.” With that, I turned to make my way upstairs, so I could get some cell phone reception.

Liz answered on the second ring. _“Hi, Eve. How’s – “_

 _“There’s been an animal attack.”_ There was silence on the other end, and I sighed. _“Caroline’s home. She’s fine, but you’re going to need an ambulance at the Lockwood estate . . . If you get here fast enough, you’ll still see the animal . . . wait a little longer, and your people should be safe to enter. Do you understand what I’m saying?”_

I couldn’t guarantee that Tyler wouldn’t attack the EMTs or even her until after he changed back. _“Is it bad?”_

_“Yes, but I’ll leave it up to you on how to proceed from here.”_

It sounded like she was on the move as she asked, _“Are you hurt?”_

_“I’m fine. I’ll meet you at the front. You’re going to need someone to show you where this place is. It's not easy to find.”_


	54. The Problem with Hospitals

Like a whirlwind with furious bouncing blonde hair, Caroline descended on my room. Probably shouldn’t have called and told her that her Dad was in the hospital until after I was sure he was out of surgery. “What happened?!”

My eyes flicked to the annoying nurse. She was fussing over me way too much, and she wouldn't leave no matter how much I hinted at it. “Uh, you know, teeth, claws, a general blood bath ensued.”

“You promised to look after him!”

Maybe I should be flattered that she'd had that much faith in me, a faith that had apparently been shattered, but I wasn't. I knew Caroline was worried about her Dad. I also knew that as a woman who needed to have absolute control over every part of her life, the fact that she was powerless to change the past few hours or alter the outcome of what was happening with her Dad now was getting to her. She’d come here to take her mind off of it by venting her frustration on me, and I understood that, but I wasn’t in the mood to put up with it. On a good day, I would’ve been hard pressed to put up with it for very long, and today had not been a good day. “Can we talk about this later?”

“No. I want to know how this happened, because right now I’m thinking that you let his happen . . . blah, blah, blah.”

If one of the other two people who were there told her what happened, then more power to them, but I wasn’t going to voluntarily offer up the information that I got my ass kicked by a middle aged man. Monsters I could handle. Humans were another thing entirely. I found walking the line between using too much force and not enough difficult to manage sometimes, or I did now that everyone around me seemed to have an opinion on it that they were whispering in my ears on an almost daily basis.

‘You have a ‘no humans policy.’ ‘Reign it in, or I will see to it that assault charges are brought against you.’ ‘You don’t have to kill. Do the right thing.’ The truth is I’d never really had to deal with humans very much, so the ‘no humans’ policy was more of a theory I’d developed, because it felt right after the harm I'd already seen done to humans, but it’s a theory I’d never really had to put to the test, and if there was ever even a look from a human that could be construed or misconstrued as threatening, my Mom had dealt with it. I was dealing with all of this on my own now, and it was proving difficult to say the least. 

I stopped her mid-sentence, because I'd long since stopped listening, and she wasn't getting what my body language said. “Get out.”

Caroline seemed genuinely surprised by that. “What?” 

“Go bother your Mom. She’s waiting for news on your Dad, who the doctors said will be fine by the way.”

“He’s going to lose his arm. How can you - “

Leveling a grumpy look in her direction, I grumbled, “Leave.” Lifting my good hand in her direction, palm splayed, like I was pushing her away with the force of my mind, I added, “I don’t feel like dealing with all of this.” She opened her mouth again, and I said, “Go. . . before I make you go.”

Her face fell into a scowl, and then she turned on her heel to presumably stomp her way to her mother. I flicked another glance at the nurse and said, “I want to be discharged.” 

“But you haven’t even seen the doctor – “

“Well then get him in here, so I can see him and go.” She finally bustled on out of the room, and the doctor came in about 5 minutes later. What followed were questions that I lied to answer by saying I was in a car accident, and that was followed by poking and prodding and the suggestion of an x-ray. We both knew what was wrong. I had a concussion, a broken collar bone, and maybe a cracked rib. He wanted to be sure. Where I hurt was a good enough indicator for me. I finally relented to save myself the hassle of arguing over it, and we found out precisely what I’d thought was wrong with the added cost of an x-ray now thrown into the evaluation.

I was waiting for him to come back when the terrier came flying into my room. I could already tell by her pace, posture, and the expression on her face that this wasn’t anything I felt like dealing with either. I have no idea how she knew I was here, but I’m guessing that Caroline called her, so she’d come to be emotional support for Caroline in this ‘difficult time.’ What a crock. At this point, they all knew Bill was going to be more or less fine. That’s not why Elena was really yapping at me right now. 

“Blah, blah, blah, blah, are you even listening to me?”

Honestly? “No.”

With a growl of frustration, Elena balled up the object I’d just told her I didn’t want right now and threw it into my lap before storming out of the hospital room. Why was she angry? Because she wasn’t following through on her responsibility to keep an eye on Imelda, or if she was, she wasn’t filling me in on what she found, so since Jeremy and I had been talking on the phone more since the Wickery Bridge accident, I’d put him on Imelda duty for the time being, and he’d come across the lock box with the demon die in it. 

He hadn’t known what it was or why it was there. He’d just figured that since he didn’t know where it came from and Elena pretended not to know where it came from when he asked her about it, then it must be Imelda’s, so he’d wanted to talk to me about it, but I’d been busy with the Tyler and Bill fiasco, so he’d taken a sledgehammer to the lock box, had a peek inside, and Elena had walked in on a lifeless Jeremy in their backyard. Had he had his medicine pouch on him to keep him safe from the die? No, because he apparently figured out sooner than I did that it would render the magic on his ring useless, which left him open to the powers of the die that Elena’d just carelessly flung into my lap, but it did also save his life, because he was already back, and I guess we’d learned a few important things about the die. 

For one, it did have the power to kill. Two, it’s magic didn’t supersede the Gilbert ring’s magic, and since it was supernatural in nature, anyone who died because of it and who was also wearing the Gilbert ring at the same time, would ultimately come back. Three, since I wasn’t now dead after it touched me, I’m guessing that it’d killed Jeremy for a reason. What that was, I didn’t know, but my theory had always been that it took something from someone to give it to the owner, so the owner may now be amongst the living again. I may have my shot at a genuine revenant yet. Four, I may not have my magic pouch, but I also didn’t feel a pull to use the die. Either this thing didn’t see me as a potential owner, or it’d done it’s job of protecting its previous owner by drawing a human near enough to touch it, so it could give their life force to the owner, and now that that was done, it wasn’t trying to mind control anyone into using it anymore. 

I’d have to wait until I found Stefan and asked him what he did with the hunter’s body to see if any of my theories were correct, or if I was way off base, but we’d learned a few important things about it, and Jeremy was fine, so I was okay with the results, but Elena was less than happy about how we’d gotten them, and I guess this was now mine again. What to do with it was another question. I picked it up, examined it briefly, and stuck it in my pocket until I could find somewhere safe to put it, as the doctor returned.

The sling he’d given me was ridiculous. Maybe I should just go the vampire blood route. No, it did nothing for my fighting abilities if I relied too heavily on an easy fix to the problems I encountered. Lesson learned this time? Don’t turn your back on people you know are dicks. They’re worse than monsters and fighting them limits your options to non-lethal means if you are trying to live by the code of not killing humans.

The doctor that was bossing me around backed away as I stood to sign some forms, so that I could be formally discharged against medical advice and got up to leave. “I’m going to write you a prescription for some pain killers. Only take – “

Pain medicine dulled your mind. Brushing past him, I muttered, “Don’t bother, I won’t take any,” as I made my way to the door. My lift was taking ages to get here, and maybe that was part of my problem. He’d answered the call Liz made right after she’d gotten to the Lockwoods’ even though I’d told her not to call him, so I knew he knew I was here and why, and the fact that he wasn’t here yet meant I had to go looking for him. If she told him I was hurt, he’d be here. Even if he was in the middle of something he had to finish and couldn't come right after she called, he should've been here by now. Something was wrong.

My suspicions grew as I got outside and saw his car parked in the parking lot. My free hand went to my phone, and I immediately started eliminating suspects by calling the most obvious choice first. _“Eve. To what do I owe the pleasure? Are you calling to convince me to do the right thing again?”_

I sighed at Klaus’s mocking tone. “That depends. You wouldn’t happen to know where Damon is, would you?”

_“Is he missing?”_

My eyes narrowed as I tried to determine if there was anything in his tone that would give me the answer I wanted. “Would I be asking if I knew where he was? He’s supposed to be here, and he’s not.”

_“Well, his type aren’t normally known for being dependable.”_

“They are when you need them to be.”

_“And why would you need him to be now?”_

I couldn’t exactly tell him where I was or why I was here. We had been trying to get Tyler to change, so he could break his sire bond to Klaus, and his line of questioning led me to believe he didn’t know where Damon was. He’d play more mind games if he did instead of trying to ask in a round about way what was wrong and needed fixing. “No reason. I’ve got to go. Bye, Klaus.”

I was just about to hang up when I heard him say, _“If it were me, I’d look to his brother for answers.”_

I snapped, “Yeah, well finding Stefan is proving to be difficult,” and then deflated as I said, “Thanks for eliminating yourself from my list of suspects instead of sending me on a wild goose chase and wasting too much of my time.” 

Again, I was ready to hang up when he said, _“Eve.”_

I responded with an exasperated, “What?”

_“If you need my help, all you have to do is ask.”_

There was really only one person I’d ever asked for help, and it’s because I’d thought we had the same goals when I approached him. If other people helped me, like Katherine, or Tyler, I didn’t ask for it. They did it on their own, people usually got hurt, and I still wound up feeling like I owed them for some reason. “I’m not the type to ask, but thanks for the offer.”

I pressed the button to end the call before he could say anything else, tried Stefan, didn’t get answer, but left a message, tried Tyler, didn’t get an answer, and didn’t leave a message. Next, I made my way to Damon’s car to begin my investigation. I didn’t see any blood. I didn’t see any dents or broken glass. There was nothing to indicate that there’d been a struggle here. I turned to look at the hospital. It wasn’t too far. I guess he could’ve made his way inside. Maybe one of the wannabe vampire slayers in this town suspected him of being a vampire and had tried to take him out when they saw an opportunity, or maybe the real vampire hunter had gotten out of his grave, made his way here, and had gotten him.

I could try to get into the security room and go through security footage or ask Liz if she’d mind doing it, but she was a little preoccupied right now, and if she got involved and went the more official route, then others might have to watch what she was watching, and what if they saw something that proved Damon was a vampire? If I did it on my own, it wouldn’t be easy because the current state of my body made stealth a little more difficult with my limited motion. I’d probably get caught, and I honestly didn’t feel like adding that to my list of things that’d gone wrong today.

I could do this the hard way and go room by room to see if I saw any signs of a struggle. If anyone asked me what I was doing, I could say I was lost and looking for Bill’s room. It wasn’t a very big hospital, so it didn’t take me more than about 15 minutes to find him in one of the more long-term care rooms. He was passed out on the floor by the door, but a cursory look at him told me he wasn’t dead. He didn’t have any of the tell-tale signs, like skin discoloration or black veins. If he had his head, his heart, and no hole in his heart made by something wooden, then he was alive . . . unless a witch killed him using magic somehow, but he looked normal, and when they killed another supernatural being using magic, then whatever it was they killed usually ended up looking pretty far from normal with charred remains if magically controlled fire was used or the normal skin discoloration and black veins, but missing or bleeding eyes, other missing body parts, shrunken or badly disfigured body parts – not normal. 

His neck didn’t look lumpy or wrong in any way, so he didn’t have a broken neck. He didn’t appear to be sick, so it wasn’t a hybrid bite. My money was on vervain. The fact that he was alive said it wasn’t the hunter, and the fact that the room seemed untouched except for him being sprawled out on the floor said this had been a sneak attack. He hadn’t seen his attacker as a threat, or there would have been more of a struggle. I could carry on postulating about what happened, or I could wake the one witness who could tell me.

Crouching down in front of him, I reached forward to gently shake his shoulder. “Damon.” Nothing. I pushed on his shoulder again. “Damon. Wake up.” I patted him lightly on the cheek. “Damon.” Nothing. 

I went to slap him kind of hard in the face, but his hand reached up to grab my wrist just before I connected, and there was a smirk on his lips before his eyes even opened into tiny little slits. “You have no patience.”

“Are you okay?”

“I will be.”

“What happened?”

His eyes opened more fully as he took in the sight of me, and he frowned a little before inhaling deeply and sitting up taller against the door. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“We both essentially know why I’m here. You, on the other hand, are the big bad vampire that’s passed out on the floor for unknown reasons.”

“Vervain.”

“Reason 101 not to become a vampire. It makes the strongest of you guys weak.”

His brow furrowed. “You’re mad at me.”

“No. I’m mad at whoever did this to you, but in their absence, you’re sort of stuck with my ire until you point me in the right direction.”

He breathed out a silent laugh and started to push himself off the floor, so I stood and waited for his answer. “I’ll tell you after you tell me, but first we’re getting out of here.”

Yeah, it was probably for the best if there was some distance between he and Bill when I told him how everything went wrong today. Looking up at him, I guessed he was thinking something similar about his own attacker. “You think the person is still here in the hospital.”

He gave me a small smile before opening the door for me. “Oh, I know the person is still here in the hospital, but I think we’ve both had enough of this place for one day.”


	55. The B-Team

“It’s not too late to back out.” 

Continuing to ignore Stefan the way I’d done since he showed back up at the house this morning, I opened the back door and hopped out of the car before it’d even pulled to a stop. I walked off into the night without another look back, and listened as they drove off down the road. They were going in the front because they were expected. I was going in the back because I wasn’t, and if I was suspicious of Damon right now, Stefan’s comment almost proved I was right not to trust them. When they weren’t fighting over a doppleganger, they got along, and when they got along, they were a pain in my ass.

Why was I suspicious? Because I probably shouldn’t be here, and yet I’m fairly certain both of them wanted me to be despite what they said. I knew the negative side of Stefan well enough now that I knew when he was goading me into doing the opposite of what he said, and that back there was a prime example of it. Then there was Damon.

The list of people who were important to him might be small, but there was a list, and he was afraid of losing people on it to the point that he’d trample all over them just to keep them around. I was living proof of that, so why hadn’t he put up more of a fight about me coming? It’s not that he didn’t put up a fight, just that his arguments had been a little weak. He’d said all the right things, like, “I have no idea how this is going to go. I don’t want you there,” but it was two seconds before he helped me put my hair up, so it wouldn’t get in my way tonight. I’d told him that he was welcome to bring one of the others, like Bonnie or Elena instead, and he said that maybe he would as he took my dart gun, so he could load it for me when he saw me struggling to do it with one hand.

In fairness to him, he did try to talk me out of coming here by giving me something safer to do that he knew was bothering me. “Why don’t you go hunt down that doctor and tell her all the things you’ve been telling me about what was wrong with what she did? That’d be way more fun than this is going to be.” 

The truth is that I’d love to meet her, so I could go over the morality of luring a person away from a crowd to steal their blood. It’s the kind of thing that vampires and people who sold organs on the black market did, not upstanding doctors. I’d also love to know how she found out Damon is a vampire. She was a Fell, so maybe she overheard someone ‘in the know’ talking about it at a Council meeting, or maybe she’d just figured it out on her own. Is that why she took the blood, to know for sure if that’s what he was, or was she sure and had other plans for that blood? Was she a part of that organization that’d had him in the 50s, or was she something else?

I could pay her a visit, but I already had a lot on my plate, and no doctor in their right mind was going to listen to a high school senior about much of anything, especially a young doctor, who had more to prove than an older doctor and would therefore be more arrogant. I could go with a more violent solution, but that didn’t seem quite right just yet, so I did the only thing I felt I could. I told on her. Liz said she’d handle it, and for now, I had to trust that she would, which is exactly what I told Damon, and that was it. He was seemingly out of arguments as he handed me my stake. His words sounded like he didn’t want me to go tonight, but his actions proved otherwise, so why was I doing this despite my misgivings? 

The doctor said that my collar bone would take 6 to 8 weeks to heal, not less than a week. My arm was in a sling, and my brain was probably still bruised, but I’d never willingly sit something like this out, because I was never one to put tending to a few bumps and scrapes above a fight. As I told Elena, your mind was your strongest weapon, and mine seemed to be working just fine despite the damage, which meant that by my own standards, I had to be here, but it was more than that. I needed a win. Things moved so fast in this town that a win didn’t stay with you very long before there were a string of losses, and the losses didn’t have to happen over more than a couple of weeks before they started wearing you down. 

That’s why I needed to be here and for tonight to go off without a hitch with the ultimate goal being that Klaus got his coffin back without killing Damon or Stefan. Why did the Salvatore brothers employ different techniques in pushing me towards being with them tonight? I didn’t know. It could be for a few different reasons.

Damon might genuinely need me as part of his plan and didn’t want to admit it. Out of all the reasons, I think I liked that one the best. It meant that he could admit to himself that he trusted me to be competent in whatever I did even if he didn’t want to admit it to me. Admitting it to me would mean that he’d have to accept me as an equal member of his team who was more likely to help than need to be helped, and he wasn’t quite there yet, but if he could admit it to himself, he was almost there. He could also be coming around to the idea that I knew what was best for me and was going to respect that going forward. The notion of that one almost made me laugh. It wasn’t that. 

Maybe he thought that I was going to do whatever I wanted anyway, and I’d worn him down enough that he believed it was best just to go with it, but that was almost as ridiculous as the second option, and I didn’t want to be that kind of person, so I hoped that wasn’t the case. He might joke about me wearing him down from time to time when I outmaneuvered him in an argument, but there was a fine line between being strong and being a bully who steamrolled over other people to get what I wanted enough times that people eventually just gave up and gave in to everything I said and did. I wanted to be strong, but I also wanted to listen to the concerns other people had . . . okay not everyone, just a select few, but still I wanted to be better than I was, and to be perfectly honest, Damon wasn’t a push over, so I doubted that was the reason why he wanted me here without wanting me to know it. 

If it wasn’t any of those things, then maybe he wanted me in the lion’s den with him, because at least then, he’d know where I was and that he wouldn’t be far if I ran into trouble. He wouldn’t want me to know that, because he knew I didn’t like the idea of anyone thinking I was a damsel in distress or behaving as if I were one. My money was on that one, but there was still an idea niggling at the back of my mind that said maybe he wanted me here for some other reason, and Stefan had just fanned the flames on that one. If I had to guess, I’d say Damon wanted me to be a shadowy presence in the background at Klaus’s not-so-humble-abode, because he didn’t want me to screw up whatever deal he’d made with Stefan to get Stefan to have a sit down with Klaus. 

Whatever the reason, I guess I was here now, and I had a job to do. It involved a lot of sneaking around, staying out of sight, and waiting for a signal that may never come, but I wasn’t just playing back up. I was providing it. It really made me more of a B option as far as back up went, but it was an integral part of this plan, and it had to be done before I stationed myself outside the room they were in to act as back up if and when I was needed. For this to work, I couldn’t go toe-to-toe with any foes I might find. Ideally, that meant I wouldn’t be discovered. 

It’s not that I was too terribly concerned with being captured. I didn’t think Klaus would kill me or lock me in a dungeon, but he would put an end to my night, and if he acted out towards the Salvatore brothers or if Damon’s cavalry wasn’t the help he was expecting it to be, then I needed to be here. My plans on how to deal with Klaus had nothing to do with violence. I just figured that I might be able to talk him down, and maybe that’s why Damon was secretly okay with me being here, but Klaus’s minions were a different story. There were no guarantees that one of them wouldn’t try to kill me if they saw an intruder lurking around the premises. It was more prudent for me to stay hidden until the right time if there ever was one.

If I was discovered, then I had my dart gun. It was a lot quieter than a normal gun. If I wasn’t fast enough with that, I also had my machete in a thigh strap next to my good hand. The idea was to deal with an opponent who became aware of my presence without alerting other nearby opponents that I was there. If that didn’t work, if I was too slow to stop the foe given my limitations, then I had a dagger and my trusty stake. If all else failed, Damon had given me a vial of his blood just in case. Good thing vampires healed so fast they had no need for platelets, because it meant their blood wouldn’t coagulate. I had no intention of using it, but I felt better knowing I could if I really needed it. Maybe Damon did too, and that’s why he hadn’t done or said more to prevent me from being here. I really needed to stop thinking about that and focus on the task at hand.

When I got to the house, I went to the back and made it inside without any trouble. All I had to do was wait until I was sure I was in the clear before simply opening the door. Once again, being what he was, I’m guessing Klaus didn’t feel the need to lock the doors. I think that might be why I wasn’t very good at breaking into places. When the things I hunted generally left their doors unlocked, there was no need for me to learn that particular skill. It was only when dealing with humans that it became an issue.

Finding my way around the house when I got inside wasn’t a problem either, since Klaus had so graciously given me a tour. It looked different now. His interior decorator had seen to that, but the layout was the same. I saw the usefulness of this place being bright now, because it made hiding in shadows when people passed by more difficult, but the overall lighting tonight was essentially mood lighting, so there were some good hiding places if you knew where to look and got to them quickly. The problem was that a hybrid would be able to sniff me out, and I was sure that since Tyler wasn’t here, the other one I knew about probably was. Plus, Klaus was one, so it was better to be safe than sorry.

I stopped at a potted plant in a corner along a hallway near the back door and stopped to rub the dirt on my hair, face, and clothes, so I could try to cover some of my scent with something that belonged in the house. After scraping the dirt that fell onto the floor behind the pot using my boot, I made my way to the hall around the corner from where Klaus had said the dining room would be. I heard voices, but I couldn’t exactly understand what they were saying. While the location was a decent one for hiding, it wasn’t the one where I’d wait when my mission was over.

With my back against the wall, I glanced down the darkened hall to my left. It’s the way I’d come to get here, and I was still in the shadows it provided. The closer I got to them, the brighter it’d be, and the greater the chance that I’d be seen, but I needed to be closer if I was going to hear the agreed upon phrase that Damon would say if he wanted me involved. I took a compact out of my pocket, opened it, and angled the mirror, so that I could see down the hallway around the corner to my right. There was a dark recess under the stairs. The voices should be clearer there. That’s where I’d go when I was done.

Having found where I would eventually wait this out and now knowing a relatively safe path to get there, I turned and stealthily went back down the maze of quasi-darkened corridors until I got to the back staircase. Light of foot, I slunk up to the second floor and waited to see if I’d been heard. Whether I had or hadn’t, none of the servants or hybrids or whoever was staffing this house came up to investigate, so I made my move, while I could. When Klaus had brought me up here during the tour, he’d used the front staircase, so if you flipped my point of view then to what it was now, that should be the room I wanted over there on the left. 

Again, all that barred my path was an unlocked door. Klaus seriously needed to do something about his security, especially when he had duplicitous guests over for dinner. Once inside the room, I let my eyes adjust to the much darker room before going over to the solid shape in the middle. Lifting the lid, I stuck my hand in near the top and felt a shoe. Wrong side. I quickly closed the lid and went over to the other end before trying that lid and finding a head of hair when I placed my hand inside the coffin that time.

Patting the forehead, I then moved a little lower until I felt his left shoulder. A little lower, and . . . there it was, the dagger. I briefly considered using my Zippo to illuminate the room, so I could make sure I had the right guy, but there was a reason I hadn’t used it yet. I didn’t want any light to seep out under the door and give away what I was doing. Maybe a little light as long as nobody could hear the flicking of a lighter? What about my phone? I grabbed it out of my pocket and stuck it right in front of the person’s face, pushed the button, and for the briefest of moments let it show me what I’d already expected to see before I clicked it off and jammed it back into my jacket. Elijah.

Without any further hesitation, I wrapped my hand around the handle and pulled the dagger out. This dagger was now mine. I was claiming it as my prize. I put the dagger in my sling, so I could use my free hand to take a bag of blood out of another one of my pockets. I knew from experience that it took them a little while to wake up, so I was hoping this might speed things along. Opening the top, I squirted some blood into his mouth and waited. Okay, so maybe the effect still wouldn’t be immediate. His color looked better than it had even a few seconds ago, but he wasn’t ready to wake up just yet. That was probably a good thing. I’d just given him a taste of blood and didn’t know how hungry that was going to make him. I knew how disorienting it was to come back from the dead, so I probably shouldn’t be here when he did.

“Gotta go, Elijah. Wake up before your brother finds out what I just did, or you’ll be stuck here a lot longer than you have been . . . I’ll leave you the bag.”

That was it. My side mission was over. Damon thought Elijah could be a useful ally to have around, and he probably wasn’t wrong. One thing I was learning about vampire brothers was that they tended to dampen one another’s worst traits, but they also had a tendency to team up with one another and make a formidable team, so I hoped this didn’t backfire. As I walked to the back staircase, my hand inside the sling wrapped around the handle of the dagger. I had two now, and Klaus wasn’t going to get this one back either. I have no idea how he lost the dagger that my father had, one I can only assume was meant for his father, but he had at some point over the years, and he’d just lost another one. He’d have to pick and choose which siblings to put down now. 

I went to walk past another room and found myself thinking that if having two daggers was better than having one, then three would be even better. She shouldn’t be up here anyway. She’d been a little mean, but she’d actually been making a life for herself away from her brother for probably the first time, and she’d been doing okay. As an added bonus, she hadn’t been down for as long as Elijah, so she could fill him in on what he’d missed, since I didn’t really have the time to do it myself. My path quickly diverted, and I made my into the second room. 

I didn’t mess around as long in Rebekah’s room as I had in Elijah’s. I didn’t even bother to make sure it was Rebekah’s room. I just found the dagger and pulled, and I think that’s because at that point, I’d decided I was going to wake all of Klaus’s siblings up and keep all the daggers for myself. It was win-win for everyone, even Klaus. I knew it was probably buried pretty deep, but keeping his siblings like this had to make him feel guilty on some level, so now he could be free of that. Besides, in my mind, this wasn’t a fight between Klaus and the Salvatores. This was a fight between Klaus and his mother. The Salvatores were simply her unwitting pawns, and Klaus’s brothers and sister deserved a chance to fight along side him for their own survival.

Walking out of the room, I murmured, “Time to wake up Rebekah. Cheerleading is positively boring without you there to keep me on my toes.” No offense to Caroline, but that was true even before I’d gotten myself hurt and wound up in a sling. Practice just didn’t have the same feeling of danger that it’d had when Rebekah was there, and after I went back to school with my injuries, I hadn’t been able to do anything during practice, but apparently, even if you were injured, you still had to go, so that was even more boring. I didn’t even know why I was doing it anymore. It’s not like Caroline had been there this week either. I heard from Jeremy that she’d gone with her Dad when he went back home, so she could help nurse him back to health. I guess maybe cheerleading was something I’d practiced doing with my Mom the last time I saw her, and that’s why I was still going. Might as well have someone I knew there to keep me company even if it was Rebekah.

I was even faster about getting the next dagger on the list and whispered nothing more than a cursory, “Kol, I never knew you, but I do have your journal. I have no idea where you went to find half the stuff you know on witches, but you’ve been incredibly helpful, so now I’m returning the favor.” Klaus was right. If you knew where to look, you could find out who the author of my anonymous text had been. It hadn’t been on the cover. I guess the book had been around longer than journals had been invented, so it’d most likely started as a collection of individual pages that he’d amassed over the years in his research on witches until books were invented, and then he or possibly even Klaus had gotten them bound together into book form. It was like a non-magical person’s grimoire, and that meant there were encoded messages in the margins throughout that only the writer would understand. 

I had a coded journal myself, so once I set to work trying to crack his code, I noted a similar pattern at the end of what might be considered various chapters or topics on a particular subject, almost like he was signing off on a letter that he’d written to himself and signed. It wasn’t until about halfway through and probably long after the kind of Viking written in the cave had gone extinct that he got lazy enough to sign his name using the dead language a couple of times, which was really quite useful in helping to crack the code in other parts of the text. I was still working on that, because more was coded than just his signature. And really, I should’ve known that one of Klaus’s family had written the book before I saw the name. The language in the book evolved from the front to the back, like it went from Middle English to more modern day usages of the language, but instead of it being added to over the generations the way I’d originally thought it was, after I saw the name, I started noticing that it had all been written in the same handwriting. I guess I just hadn’t thought I’d been learning valuable information from the enemy.

At the last room, I stopped and briefly pondered leaving Fin’s dagger where it was. If I knew next to nothing about Kol, then I knew absolutely nothing about this guy. I could leave Klaus with one dagger between 4 siblings, but it might be more amusing to see how he dealt with 4 siblings that were almost impossible to kill without having anything he could use to control them, so it was a feeling of mischievousness and a desire to finally obtain all of the daggers that really motivated me to take that final dagger more than it was a sense of fairness for a guy I didn’t know who had been imprisoned in his own body for who knew how long. 

Happy with my score, I returned to the door and paused to listen for any noises outside the way I had every time I’d gone to leave one of these rooms tonight. I heard nothing and slowly opened the door. I looked left, since that way was unblocked by the door, saw nothing, and never got a chance to look to my right as a hand flashed forward to grab me by the front of my jacket. Before I knew it, I was picked up and thrown head over heels across the corridor. I hit the opposite wall with my back, slid down it head first, landed in a heap on the floor, and instantly knew I was fucked.

I wasn’t worried about my attacker. As a human, my immediate attention went to my injuries that’d been made 10x worse. My head was pounding, and I could actually feel where my clavicle was sticking out of my skin, which would freak anyone out. Even when my attacker picked me up and pinned me to the wall by the throat, I was more concerned with getting him off of me so I could assess my injuries than I was with him doing more harm, which means it was with pure instinct and without a rational thought in mind that I pulled one of the daggers out of my sling and stabbed it into the fleshy part of my attacker’s side faster than a human would expect me to do it, and from the looks of it, faster than a hybrid expected as well. I sliced across his abdomen, and now he was the one who wanted to assess his own injuries. Whether it’d kill him or not, being disemboweled would make anyone loosen their grip, and then I pushed off the wall at my back and used my good shoulder to shove into him with as much force as possible to make him take a step back. 

I would’ve done whatever it took to make him back off, so I could get some space. Permanent space would be preferable, so I withdrew the dagger from his stomach and would’ve stabbed him again to distract him while I went for my machete, but there was a crunching sound, and his eyes opened wide in shock for only a moment before he fell to the ground. I was now left facing a disheveled Elijah still holding onto the hybrid’s heart, and that is how Klaus’s final hybrid, who wasn’t Tyler, was killed. He was going to be so pissed. This was supposed to be a non-violent sit down . . . on the other hand, I hadn’t killed him, Elijah had, and honestly, I didn’t care about any of that or whether or not this house was built sturdily enough for it to have muffled the sounds of what’d just happened. I was too concerned with not doubling over, something that hurt my shoulder worse. To relieve the pressure, I turned away from Elijah, so I could rest my good forearm against the wall. Resting my forehead on my arm, I took long slow breaths and tried to keep myself from vomiting.

“Forgive me, but – “

“I know I’m bleeding. There are some servers downstairs. I’d appreciate it if you got what you need from them and gave me a couple of minutes to collect myself.”

There was a brief pause, and then he sounded more relaxed. “Eve.”

In between slow, methodical breaths, I managed, “Yeah.”

“You disappeared without a trace.”

Inhaling deeply through my nose, I attempted to keep the bile down as I turned to slump back against the wall and put the bloody dagger back in my sling. “I was imprisoned in a coffin for a few days . . . Damon and my Dad didn’t like my plan much either.”

Taking in the sight of me, it was with concern that he said, “You’ve been hurt,” and I knew what he meant. 

He wasn’t talking about the gaping wound in my shoulder or the jagged bone sticking through it. He meant the sling. I had been hurt before all of this happened . . . hence the reason I probably shouldn’t have been here, and I just couldn’t help but snark back my response. “What gave it away?”

“Did Niklaus – “

“No.” Shaking my head, I reached into my pocket to find my ‘if all else fails’ plan, because fuck this. I’d tried, but I wasn’t going to stay like this another second longer if I didn’t have to do it. I’d just fake needing the sling for the time being, so I didn’t have to answer any questions about how I healed so quickly. Maybe I could even use it to my advantage. When I found the vial, I continued. “No, I can honestly say that Klaus has never hurt me.”

“Then he knows about you?”

Popping the cap, I nodded. “Yeah . . . He found me about 2 months later. It’s a long story.” Lifting the vial, I asked, “Do you mind?” 

Looking amused, he took a step back. “By all means.”

I looked at the vial in disgust and then shook my head before forcing myself to down it in one go. I made a face when I was done and then forced myself back against the wall. Looking down at my broken collar bone for the first time, I growled in frustration and then looked back up at Elijah. “Could you maybe push this back the way it’s supposed to be.”

“It’ll heal on its own now.”

“Yeah, but how long is that going to take, and I don’t want to have to look at it while it does, and how do I know that it won’t heal like that? It’s a compound fracture, not a – “

He moved so fast that I couldn’t see him, and it was done before my mind or body could really register what’d happened, so it was a moment after he’d stepped back to where he’d been standing that I gasped in pain and then sighed in relief. “Thanks.” With normal vampires, you could usually see streaks that let you know where they were even when they were moving fast, but he was a hell of a lot faster than that. 

“Where is Niklaus?”

Quickly remembering why I was here and what I was meant to do, I rushed to answer him in a whisper, while trying to step away from the wall. I’d already made way too much noise. “Downstairs having a dinner party with the Salvatores. I doubt it’s a very pleasant one. I have to go.“

Taking a step to his right, Elijah blocked my exit. “And do what?”

“I’m their back up, but I think of it more as playing the referee to make sure nobody gets hurt.”

“Even Niklaus?”

“Yeah . . . he can’t die, but he can get hurt and then very angry, so it’s probably best if I’m there to keep them from doing something stupid and talk him down if necessary.”

Seeming amused once again as he moved back half a step, Elijah asked, “You think you can talk my brother down?”

“Yes - ish. Well, I’m probably the best bet while you guys are out of the picture . . . and then there’s you 4. I have to make sure you don’t hurt him, so he doesn’t take it out on anyone else.”

“Minding my brother is quite a burden for someone your age to have on her shoulders.”

“I wouldn’t really call it minding. I’d call it strategy and tactics, and I’m already late. I really should – “

Stepping in front of me once again to keep me from leaving and lifting his finger as if he had a point to make, Elijah said, “Forgive my rudeness, but will you grant me a few more moments of your time?”

A few. As long as he wasn’t hungry, then how unsafe was I as long as he was here? I knew implicitly that if his waking siblings tried to bite me, he wouldn’t let them, and that even if Klaus came up here to rip my head off my shoulders Elijah would at least give me a good head start. “Go on.”

“I take it my brother doesn’t know that you have freed us.”

“Well, he didn’t. I don’t know if he does now. I’m guessing that me getting thrown into a wall might have given away that something is going on up here.”

Yet another reason for me to go somewhere else further away from the crime as quickly as possible.

“Well if he did, I’m guessing that he’ll be expecting his man to drag in whoever caused the disturbance.” He had a point. Klaus did have enough integrity to get his hands dirty. He certainly wouldn’t want one of his minions acting on his behalf without his say so. That didn’t mean we had all the time in the world though. Damon and Stefan might be able to distract him long enough that he’d forget what he’d heard, but it was better not to count on that. I gave him a brief nod to accept what he’d said, and Elijah responded, “And I take it you have no intention of becoming a vampire.”

Damon had done just about everything possible to bring Klaus down despite what we’d discussed on this, which was annoying, because we were in this battle of wits right now, but in a way it was also good, because it maintained the status quo of me saying I’d think about it while already having a pretty good idea of what I wanted. I didn’t feel like I was being forced into any one direction because of something I’d said in a negotiation that’d obviously broken down. “I’m considering my options, but right now, I'm leaning heavily towards, ‘no,’ on that one.” 

“You’ve just ingested vampire blood.”

I knew where he was going with this now. “Against my better judgement, but in my defense, that really freaking hurt.”

“I’m sure it did . . . but I’d just like to point out that now you are prepared to not only face my brother after having betrayed him, but you are also planning to do it, while getting in the middle of he and your friends, who I can only assume are his enemies du jour.”

“And?” I waited until that’d sunk in and had suitably annoyed him despite his attempts to hide it. Then I smiled. “I understand Elijah, but all that really means is that I have to be that much better to keep from dying. It’s a challenge I know I can meet.” Looking down at the corpse on the ground, my eyebrows rose as I said, “But he can’t know I had any part of killing his second to last hybrid.”

His eyes flicked at the body as his barely bridled contempt shown through. “There were more.”

“A couple dozen . . . give or take. I killed the rest right before I killed Mikael.” His attention immediately came back to me, and my grin grew as I turned to go down the back stairs. “And yet here I still stand . . . like I said, strategy and tactics . . . he and I have an understanding on that much at least.” I felt the wind move my hair, and then he was standing in front of me again.

“Mikael is dead?”

“For a few weeks now.”

His posture went rigid, and his eyes scanned the closed doors along the second floor. “And yet he’s kept us all imprisoned?”

“Well, he’s got a lot on his plate right now . . . I’m sure his intention is to let you all go. He just doesn’t seem to have faith that you guys can protect yourselves against this next big threat, and if I’m being honest, I’m not sure he’s wrong. I do think you have a right to try though.”

“What threat?”

“Your mother.”

Looking off to the side and almost talking to himself, Elijah muttered, “It would seem I’ve missed much in my time away.”

It was kind of nice to have someone take me at my word instead of questioning me incessantly or arguing everything I said. I went to step around him with an obligatory, “Yep,” but he shifted his weight to stop me once again.

“If I give you my word that no harm will come to Damon or his brother, would you leave?”

Well, he was the intended backup, and I was the B-team backup, but I was still important, because if the A-team screwed up, then I needed to be there. “I have a responsibility to - 

“You have all the daggers.”

Sounding unsure of what he wanted, I whispered, “I do.”

“And what will you do with them?”

Answering matter-of-factly, I said, “Well, they’re mine now. I won them fair and square.”

“He will want them back.”

“Well, he can’t have them if he can’t find them. If he wants to keep you guys from leaving him or betraying him or annoying him or whatever it is that he thinks you guys have done to make him use them on you, then he’s going to have to find a better way . . . a more humane way. He’s going to have to learn to be a leader and brother who puts the work in to get you to do what he wants instead of going for the easy option.” 

“Then hide them while he’s preoccupied with our family reunion. You won’t get a better chance to do it, and I give you my word that your friends will leave this house alive.”

What happened to unharmed? Meh, if some harm came to Stefan, then maybe it’d do him some good. “Damon unharmed. Both alive.”

The smile almost reached his eyes even if it didn’t quite make it’s way to his mouth. “As you wish.”

“Then we have a deal.” I offered him my hand. He took it, and we shook on our pact before he stepped aside. If he gave me his word, then I knew he'd keep it. Silently, I bounded down the stairs and made my way to the back exit with the thought of what to do with the daggers first and foremost in my mind. Luckily, I had just the right places to put them in mind.


	56. Back to the Team I Know Best

I stayed seated in my corner of the room as the others discussed what they were going to do about this latest turn of events. For the time being, I wasn’t going to say a word until spoken to. I was angry, and I had been from the moment I saw the blonde woman walk out of the Cave of Forgotten Original History. I’d gone to the Lockwood property to drop a dagger in the well where Mason had put the moonstone, because I figured it’d already been used as a hiding place, and it wasn’t a bad spot. Nobody would’ve found it if Bonnie hadn’t gone digging around in his head. Nobody knew that I'd explored the Lockwood's estate over the summer and knew where it was, so nobody would expect me to hide anything there. Plus, Klaus didn’t know about it. All that moonstone and Mason business happened before he even got here. 

It was a risk hiding another dagger so close to that one, because I really should be dropping them in different corners of the world, but I had high school, so I figured that dropping them around Mystic Falls would have to suffice until I got the time I needed to put them somewhere safer, so another decent hiding place should have been a place that no vampires could go. Hence the reason I was on my way to the cave. Halfway to my destination, I’d heard the sounds of feet scraping along the stones. Nobody should have been down there, but the scrapes were noticeable, and they were slowly coming towards me. It could have been anything or anyone, so I quickly made my way to the tunnel with all the booby traps in it and hid in the dark there. 

The glow from a candle came closer and closer until the candle was directly across from me, and I could see that it was being held by a blonde woman. The thing that stood out most about her were her clothes. Unless there was an RPG convention going on in town that I didn't know about, her clothes were all wrong. She looked like a peasant, and I knew. I just knew. I wasn’t the only one who thought the cave that barred vampires from entering would be a good place to hide something from vampires . . . or hybrids. It’s not like I hadn’t looked down here in my search for the coffin all around town, because I had, but it hadn’t been here any of the times I’d looked. Someone or a team of people had been one step ahead of me the entire time.

My jaw clenched in anger as I forced myself not to say anything or move to give my position away. I could have killed her then, but I knew next to nothing about her other than she was a powerful witch, and I had nothing on me that could kill or even stop witches. I mean, I had some daggers I could throw and a machete, but something told me she was fast enough to stop me from using them. After she was gone and the light faded, I continued on my trek to the cave with all the drawings. Before I even got close to it, I was able to turn my phone off because of all the candles that were lighting the cave. I saw Bonnie knocked out in the cavern’s entrance, and who I could only presume was another witch passed out by the opened coffin. It was then that I felt marginally better about my choice to not confront Esther when I’d had the chance. 

Deciding not to put one of the daggers in here, I turned around and left. Damon and Stefan could help the hapless witches, since I was fairly certain they knew they were down here. It made sense . . . the deceit behind keeping me preoccupied at the dinner party despite my injuries. They hadn’t wanted me to get involved and try to stop this from happening, and it made me furious. I wasn’t angry that I’d ‘lost,’ because this was just one battle in a war I was sure I could win. It was the cover up that surrounded it . . . all the work that had to have gone into keeping me in the dark.

Bonnie was there, so I’m guessing that Elena not only knew what she was going to do, but had also known exactly how much magic Bonnie had regained, and it was a lot more than she’d lead me to believe. Maybe it hadn’t been at the time we’d talked about it, but I bet she knew every step of the way how much magic Bonnie had actually gotten back as her power grew, and she hadn’t said a word about it to me. I also bet that she told Bonnie what I’d said about how Bonnie was the one who could open the coffin, and I bet that’s what motivated Bonnie to get her magic back even faster than she’d wanted it back before she had a mission. Since that’s what her ancestors wanted her to do, because they hated vampires, then I’m guessing her ancestors gave her their blessing in using them as a power source once again, so they were a problem . . . just the way I said they would be. Had I been paranoid? No. I’d just been right.

Bonnie didn’t even have to finish her journey of learning her lesson on the abuses of magic, because I know I sure as hell hadn’t gotten an apology from her yet. Probably used my blanket forgiveness for her killing me to skip right over needing to make amends, so she could get her magic faster. That’d been a miscalculation on my part, but I hadn’t known then what would be happening now. And if Elena most likely knew everything that’d been going on with Bonnie, then I guarantee she also knew more about Imelda and what that witch was planning than she’d told me, which is why I’d had to go to Jeremy for intel. 

Then there were Damon and Stefan. They knew everything Elena did and more. They’d actively lied to me. They’d also lied by omission, and I wasn’t one to judge on that, because I didn’t tell people everything either. In fact, I was still holding onto some secrets of my own, because a lifetime habit like that was a hard thing to break when you relied on it for self-preservation, but right now I was glad I hadn’t told them everything. Maybe I should be learning some kind of a lesson about all of this, like what it was like on the other side of being lied to by omission, but this felt different than when I did it. I wasn’t kept out of the loop because they were trying to protect themselves or for my own benefit. It wasn’t to keep me safe or protect me in anyway. It was because I was the dissenting voice in a group of people with a mob mentality. 

I’d repeatedly said that I’d be up for finding another way of dealing with Klaus so long as he wasn’t killed. I’d repeatedly said that having his mother brought back from the dead was a bad idea, and it wasn’t even just that she had the power and magical means necessary to kill her son that kept me from wanting her back. It’s that she’d had her time, and she’d bungled it by turning her own children into vampires, so what was she going to do if she was given another chance? What if she came up with something worse than a vampire to vanquish her children? She was untrustworthy and an absolute threat to not only her family, but everyone else; vampires, humans, werewolves, other witches, everyone. We didn’t need her just because she scared Klaus, and if she did scare Klaus, shouldn’t that tell them something about who she was? 

That’s it. That was my stance, and for that, I’d been ostracized from the group. They were a team. I wasn’t on it unless I had something useful they thought they could get from me, and I had no part in their plans other than to be a potential obstacle for them that they needed to work around. I don’t think I’d ever felt so alone or used or mislead or thought of myself as ‘other’ more than I had the last few days. It’d been a learning experience for sure. I don’t know that I’d call it a good learning experience, but gone were any illusions that I may have ever had that I might one day be one of them.

Even now, the only reason I was most likely allowed to be here for this discussion was because they had no idea how angry I really was, since I'd done a remarkable job of hiding it, and they were on a crossroads with their plans on what to do. They probably thought that if I was included, while they bitched about their current circumstances, they could get me to cough up more information that they needed, but they weren’t getting anything else out of me. I was my own team. I liked my team. It’s the only one I could trust. 

The problem, big surprise, was Esther. She hadn’t worked out quite the way they’d expected . . . yet. To me, that _yet_ was pretty important. She may not have laid waste to her children the moment she was freed from the coffin, but I knew she was just biding her time until she had all her pieces in place, and then she would. To the people in the room, she was now a part of the problem, because she was shacking up in her children’s mansion and apparently throwing some kind of a ball as a kind of ‘welcome us to the neighborhood,’ gesture. Well, the people in this room were incredibly short-sighted.

A person might think this was the prime opportunity for me to maybe convince them that she needed to die and use them to kill her, but at this point, I wanted them to see the absolute error of their ways before I did anything with them or for them again. If the others wanted any genuine help from me on anything after they saw I was right all along, then . . . well, I wouldn’t say grovelling was required, but I wouldn’t turn it down. In the meantime, my goals were to put an end to any immediate threats to Klaus and deal with my unwanted stalker. My mind immediately went to the second of those as I caught a flash of lightening outside . . . or what looked like lightening outside. 

Today had started off kind of nice, but now it was raining, and getting windy, so nobody else noticed. They were all too wrapped up in their self-obsessed problems to notice that the clap of thunder that’d accompanied the lightening was concurrent with the lightening. There should have been a delay no matter how short unless the lightening was striking the house, and it’d been a little too far away for it to have been that. My stalker was smart. He was using the rain to cover what he’d just done, so everyone in here would think on a subconscious level that it was just part of the storm that was on its way when in fact it was one of my flash grenades set up to go off if anyone approached the house from the woods. Was I worried? No. I knew he wouldn’t strike right now. He wanted me to know he was there without letting the others know. 

Sure, I could actually have been driven into a delusional paranoia after the events of the last week, but I was fairly certain he’d been doing things the last few days that only I would notice. He was playing games, but nothing too obvious, like he’d leave little messages to play with my mind and make me ask myself if I’d really left this item in that place or were there eyes really on me. He was getting more brazen, and I felt that needed to be addressed, because until now, I’d mostly been ignoring him. Slowly getting up from my spot in the corner, I silently went to the window knowing I wouldn’t see him out there, but he could still see me. 

I might be angry with everyone in this room, but I wasn’t going to let him kill any of them. It might look to everyone else like I was still injured, because I was still wearing my sling, but I was fine and ready any time he wanted to go. I just wasn’t going to tell any of them about it. With a smirk, I used my body to hide my actions from the people in the room while I stuck my middle finger up at my stalker in response to his taunt, and it was then that opportunity struck.

“Eve? We need to know what she wants, don’t we, and the best way for us to find that out is if I go there and talk to her, right?”

Actually, if I were in charge of their shit show, I’d send me into the party as her since my presence there wasn’t exactly wanted. Yes, Elijah had stopped by here this morning with a box and an invitation, but he hinted that he’d had to do some convincing to get me an invitation. I knew Klaus had to be one of his siblings that didn’t want me there. There’s really one person outside of Damon or Stefan who would’ve had the audacity to release his family during their dinner sit-down, so he knew it was me. I’m guessing that he also wanted to give his mother a chance after she told him she forgave him, and I’d already told him where I stood on Esther. I was sure that the other sibling that didn’t want me there was Rebekah, who also knew where I stood on their Mom and didn’t want me taking her chance at having her mother back away from her.

I told Elijah which siblings I thought had been his primary roadblocks and why, and he didn’t say I was wrong. What he did was give me a charming smile and ensure that everyone would behave. So, I took the box with a dress inside, felt mildly insulted that they were dressing all of us to suit their stupid fancy party after having already heard about Elena and Caroline’s dresses, and told Elijah thanks, but I’d have to think about it. 

With a long, slow breath, I took the time to hide the instant anger I felt at any of the people in this room directly asking anything of me and then turned when I was sure that I looked calm, cool, and collected. Walking back to my seat, I answered, “Do what you want Elena, but if you're on a team, then whatever you do, make sure everyone is in agreement. If they’re not, then that’s how people get hurt.”

Damon, who’d joined Stefan’s side in not wanting Elena to go, but then stayed on that side when Stefan caved to give Elena whatever she wanted, quickly took over on the conversation. “That’s it?!”

Pursing my lips as I looked off in faux-thought, I nodded and then said, “I think that’s pretty sound advice.” 

“We have no idea what that woman has planned. The last thing we should be doing is giving her what she wants.”

Returning to my book, I shook my head in agreement. “Nope.”

“Then say something better than that to put her off of this!”

 _No, I don’t think I will._ “Well, if she insists on going, then she’s going to find a way to be there. Might as well get used to the idea now.”

His eyes narrowed as he studied me. “And what are you gonna be doing while she’s doing that?”

“I have my own plans.”

The look of suspicion on his face grew as he took a step or two in my direction. “Like what? I know you’re not just going to let her go in there without you tonight.” Ah, and now we were at the crux of his reason for not wanting Elena to go. Me. It’s the same reason he was trying to kill Klaus. Well, that, and I doubt he saw any other way to get his dumb ass of a brother off the hook after everything Stefan had pulled lately, but there were other ways to deal with Klaus, ones that didn’t require killing the guy, and Damon wasn’t even trying to find them. Why weren't any of them trying to lock him in the damn vault or something along those lines?

Picking up my book and opening it to the page I’d last read, I responded, “There’s a case I’ve been following that needs some attention.” 

Before Damon could respond, Elena quickly asked, “Where?”

Scanning the remainder of the page, I moved onto the next, while saying, “Savannah.”

“What about school?”

What, like she and the others had a perfect attendance record? I’m a little surprised that they were passing any of their classes. I, however, was ahead, despite any absences I may have taken while I was hunting Stefan in his room. “I’m ahead. It won’t take longer than a few days. I’ll be back before anyone notices I’ve been gone.”

Damon went back to interrogating me in the hope that he’d finally get me to open up to him. I’d shut him out, and it’s something he’d noticed and had commented on a couple of times, but I hadn’t been ready to talk about it. I was tired of saying the same things over and over again without anyone taking me seriously, so what was the point in talking about it at all. Besides, he knew what he did wrong. They all did. I shouldn’t have to spell it out for them. “Uh huh, and this ‘case’ of yours. It just has be done tonight?”

There actually was a case, and I actually was going to go deal with it. It’s something I’d had my eye on for a few years now, and Mystic Falls wasn’t the only town on the planet. Right now, the people of Savannah needed my help whether anyone knew it or not, and the timing of it couldn’t have been more perfect. I needed a vacation. “The first person in a biennial cycle has gone missing, and to prevent any more people from disappearing – never to return - it’s necessary I deal with it . . . I won’t get another chance for another hundred years when it all starts up again, so yes, it’s something I have to deal with right now.”

Damon deadpanned, “Great, so when are we leaving,” and I turned the page of my book without looking up at him. 

Yes, I was angry with him, but I also had to remember that being angry didn’t mean that I wanted to burn all my bridges with him. There were no good ways to deal with this. What would have been good was preventing it from coming to this at all, but that hadn’t happened. And it’s not that I wanted to give the impression that I was punishing him. I just needed to do what was best for me right now. 

I could choose to be a doormat, let them put me in my place as they saw it, and get over it to keep the peace, or I could stand up for myself, because I was the only one who would, and let them know I refused to be anyone’s doormat. I wish I could say I was built for B, but after years of doing everything in column A to keep my parents happy, so I didn’t disappoint them, I knew that column A was a lot easier even if it weighed you down more over time. The difference was that these guys weren’t my parents, so I was less inclined to put up with it, and the people in this room had been jerks to me in one way or another since I’d met them.

Stabbing anyone with a stake was out. Stabbing anyone with anything was out really. That was a short term solution for a long term problem. I was fairly certain that there was an adult way to deal with this and a childish way to deal with it, and I had no idea which option I was about to take, but I knew I needed some time to myself, and I also knew that I didn’t want to push Damon into a childish reaction where he burned his bridges with me. Not all was lost. I could forgive quite easily given the right circumstances, but I needed to make a point, and it’s one I’d been struggling all week to figure out myself. “From the sounds of things, you’re needed here. _I’m_ leaving when the rain lets up.” 

“When the rain lets up.”

I had a trap to go check before I left, and I wasn't going out there in the rain to do it. “Mmhm.”

The silence in the room became almost palpable, and I ignored the looks that must have been tossed around the room between them. A few moments later, Stefan said something about it getting kind of late to Elena. I suppose she had a ball to get ready to attend, so she did need to get going. If they thought she was going to do anything other than that, then they were in for a surprise. When he ushered her to the door, I didn’t know if that meant Stefan was going to give Damon and I some room, or if he was just kicking her out and planning to stick around to give his brother some back up. Even when they hated one another, which they definitely didn’t at the moment, they were brothers above all else. That was good for them even though they didn’t acknowledge it half the time, and it was bad for everyone around them pretty much all the time.

I continued reading until there was a change of tactics when Stefan came back and took the floor. “So, I’ve been thinking that maybe I should get out of town for a little while too.” Actually, it was better for the world if he was limited to one place where his brother and the others could keep a leash on him. He was trying to turn a new leaf, I guess, and Damon wanted to help him do that, but did that mean I was supposed to be involved in helping him? I don’t think so. If he thought I was ever going on another road trip with him unless his body was in the trunk, then he had another thing coming, especially since he was saying it so he could keep an eye on me for his brother. 

“Well, you’re not coming with me. If it’s uncomfortable for you to be here, then I suggest you work on it, and you can start by fixing your wreck of a car that’s parked in the garage. Think of it as an extension of you. Fix yourself first before you go mucking about with anyone else, or let me put it another way. You didn’t just screw up. You _are_ screwed up, and that’s why you screwed up. Own it, and then fix the things that can be fixed and accept the things that can’t before you go near another living soul.”

“Eve – “ 

I silenced him with a look. “I said no.”

Exhaling a frustrated sigh, he threw his hands up almost defensively before taking a step back. As he turned to walk out of the room, he threw an added, “Good luck,” over his shoulder at his brother, and my eyes went from staring daggers into the back of his head to glancing at Damon before I relaxed and went back to pretending to read my book.

“If you want any pointers, I can get you clearing a room even faster than that.” A small smile crept onto my face without my eyes ever leaving the page. Damn him. “You wanna tell me what it is you think you’re hunting?”

That got my attention, and I looked up at him. He wasn’t going to go at this the obvious way. He was coming at it from the side to catch me off guard, so maybe what I needed to do was approach it head on to throw him off. Laying the book face down in my lap, I gave him my undivided attention before saying, “I’m angry Damon.” There was a pause as I let that sink in, but he didn’t exactly seem all that surprised by it as he sat on the arm of the nearest chair. “But I think it’s important for me to point out that despite hating her a little right now, I am leaving Elena in your care, and that’s no small thing.”

I didn’t trust him right now, and yet I did on something as important as that. He ducked his head and nodded before saying, “It's just Elena you hate?” as his eyes came back to mine.

I looked away from him and muttered, “Well, I’m not a big fan of Stefan or Bonnie right now either. Jeremy, I like, and Matt I’m neutral on most of the time. Caroline’s really annoying me at the moment.” Caroline hadn’t known any of what they were planning. She hadn’t even been here, and they hadn’t wanted to ‘burden’ her with what was happening, while she focused on her Dad's health, but she and I still hadn’t come to an amicable conclusion to the whole Tyler and Bill saga yet, and I knew she was back in town and going to that stupid ball tonight. Bet her Dad had enough of her obsessing over him and sent her back home under the guise of it being better for her if she went back to school or something. Never mind, he was still around to do anything even after what he did. Instead, let’s hold on to the fact that he got hurt on my watch. In all honesty, I was about 50/50 on whether I should be angry with myself for that, and I know she didn’t know what happened to keep me from doing a better job unless her Dad told her, but I couldn’t help wanting her to put my mind at ease with something as simple as ‘I know you tried,’ instead of being angry with me for failing. 

“And me?”

I glanced at Damon and released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Hate's a bit strong . . . angrier than I’ve ever been with you? Yeah, but hate? No.”

He didn’t seem all that surprised by that either, and this is how I knew he knew he’d screwed up. He’d stay clear of my room. He’d been tiptoeing around me all week. He hadn’t pushed me into this conversation before I wanted to talk about it. He wasn’t arguing or getting angry even though he probably should, given his nature and the fact that he had to feel like I was attacking him, however subtly, right now. He almost seemed resigned. “You haven’t said anything.”

I knew that, and I knew that it’d prevented him from being able to address this before I became as bitter about it as I was, but I didn’t want to be talked out of feeling the way I did, because if I did, then it’d let him off the hook too easy, and he’d think he could do it again as long as he defused the situation in some similar way down the road. I’d rather he not do something like this again. I’d also rather wait until I had a handle on the situation myself, because I’d been thinking about this non-stop since it’d happened, and I hadn’t really known how to deal with it. 

“I know, and you’ve given me multiple chances to do that, but I just . . . “ Bowing my head, I shook it before saying, “I didn’t want to talk about it until I was ready, because I didn’t want my anger to take a wrecking ball to you and I.” I released another reluctant breath before adding, “And it’s not just that I feel like an outsider now. Everyone else? Fine. I’ve always been an outsider with them, but you? It’s always been different with you . . . until now. And it isn’t just that I’m angry, because you seem determined not to listen to me. It isn’t just that I don’t want you to die to the point that I will fight you with everything I have to keep you from killing Klaus, or that I haven’t even gotten started on that yet, because I’ve been too busy wasting my time on pointless side-problems and sometimes completely nefarious side projects I’ve been given to keep me out of the way, or that you haven’t bothered to look for alternative ways of dealing with Klaus yet. I needed a win, Damon, and it’s not that I’m a sore loser.” My eyes flicked back to him. “It’s that as a hunter, I can’t allow myself to lose. I had a 100% success rate before I moved here, or I wouldn’t have been alive to move here, and since moving here, that percentage has gone way down . . . I can’t get used to losing. It’s a death sentence if I do. That’s why I need to do this, and it’s why I need to do it alone.”

There. It was out, the absolute honesty to both myself and Damon, and he could take it in so many bad ways. I hoped he didn’t. I hoped he understood. I think that hope may have even made its way to my face as I sat there looking over at him. He got up to go to the bar and concentrated his attention on pouring himself a drink. Replacing the cap on the bottle, he went for the glass and hesitated as he picked it up saying, “And your arm? You’re planning on hunting like that?” 

While he raised the glass to his lips and tipped it back, I thought about telling him the truth, but why tell him I’d been keeping it a secret this whole time when I'd be coming back with a healed collarbone anyway. I just needed my stalker to see the sling and follow me out of town thinking I was a wounded bird, so I could deal with him somewhere else. His games were getting more forceful. He’d want a confrontation soon, but not tonight. I could deal with him, save Savannah, and get some much needed time away from this town. “Well, I still have your vial, so . . . “

Filling his glass again, he nodded solemnly to himself. “You’ll use it if you need it?”

“Yeah.” 

His eyes flicked in my direction as he tried to see if I was telling him the truth, but while his vial was empty, I did have it, and I’d already taken it, so obviously I would if I felt I needed it, which meant there was no lie there. He nodded again before focusing back down on his glass. Tossing it back, he placed it on the bar when it was empty and then said, “You should drink it before you go.”

“I’ll keep that under advisement.”

“And on your way out of town, you should go to the ball.” My eyebrow arched in response, and he tossed a look in the direction of my sling before muttering, “But you won’t be able to fool anyone into thinking you’re her if you’re wearing that,” as he turned to walk out of the room.

I take it that means he didn’t think I was really going on a hunt and was calling me out on what he thought my plan was. Or maybe he thought he needed to do damage control and was letting me know he thought I could handle going there as Elena when he clearly didn’t trust Elena to go as Elena, because she’d inevitably do something stupid that I’d need to protect her from at some point in the night. Or he was saying he was fine with it if I went, because he was trying to make amends by letting me know he didn’t doubt that I could handle myself. Or he just wanted me there because he didn’t want the responsibility of looking out for her. Or maybe he was testing me. Or maybe he wanted one last chance to try and talk me out of going. Or he just wanted me there. I didn’t know, but I had the feeling that maybe I wanted to find out. I guess I had a couple of hours to decide.


	57. A Long Farewell

I wasn’t going as Elena. I’d decided that early, because it’d mean some pretty drastic changes to my hair, and I didn't have time to pull it off. I’d needed to pack. Then it'd taken longer to get dressed than I’d planned. I did consider not getting all dressed up to go to this stupid thing and just showing up in my Athena attire, but that’d make me stand out, and if I was going to this simply because I saw it as a fact finding mission, then I needed to blend in with the crowd. That was more important than being able to move more freely in my hunter clothes. Although, I wasn't sure that I wouldn’t stand out anyway. 

First of all, I hadn’t had any help getting ready, and it sounds really pathetic, but I really could’ve used Caroline’s help pulling this off. Secondly, I was wearing my combat boots. My dress was pretty long, so I figured it’d hide them from most people, but some people always noticed those kinds of things. I just didn’t want any 1000 year old vampires stepping on my toes and figured these would protect my feet better than strappy shoes, not that I owned a pair of those, so I didn’t know how to walk in them, and I’d probably fall down the stairs if I did wear them. Third, was the color of this dress. It was the same kind of rich violet that my hair was down the shade, so not only did it bring my highlights out, because my hair was down, since I hadn’t had time to put it up, but it was also a pretty bold color choice for a party like this. 

Uhh . . . Fourth, and something I only realized once I walked into the house was that I was walking in during the middle of some speech that Elijah was giving on the stairs, which meant that I was interrupting his speech when everyone in the room was listening to him down below. Damn doorman couldn’t have told me that when he let me in here. I threw the guy a glare over my shoulder before looking up to Elijah, and sighing. No need for the dramatic pause. 

Oh, this was mortifying and not going to plan at all. At least I’d left my sling with the guy on the door. I doubted my stalker would be coming in here tonight. Maybe I stood out a little less without it? With a nod and a gracious look that I hoped conveyed, ‘Please continue,’ I did a tiny curtsey. Is that what people did at these things? I didn’t know, and I think a 10th of a second after I did it, the abject horror I felt at being in this situation became quite apparent. 

Elijah grinned, and I saw a glint in Klaus’s eye that indicated that he was amused as well before they shared a look, and Elijah continued. Maybe I’d been wrong about Klaus not wanting me here. No, I don’t think I was. I think he was angry with me until he saw me, and now he was going to be keeping an eye on me to make sure I behaved. Of course it could’ve been his mother as well that didn’t want me here. She knew I was onto her. Dead people loved to spy on us, and there she was for all to see at the top of the stairs. 

Her attention was on me, while Elijah continued his speech. We locked eyes, and then her attention went to someone else in the crowd. I followed her eyes and found my sister. Was she sure that was Elena? With how long she held Elena’s gaze, I’m guessing she did. Her requested meeting with Elena had something to do with Elena being a doppleganger, didn’t it? I mean Esther had shown a propensity for using that Tatia woman for her spells, and here she was again wanting to speak to another doppleganger. The speech had been given, and the crowd was moving into another room. I went to take a step in Elena’s direction, but stopped when I felt someone step beside me. 

Not just anyone. I knew by the feel of him that it was Damon and without looking at him said, “I’m here.”

“So, I see.” 

My eyes darted up to him, and the anxiety I felt at being in this big, open, well-lit room with all these people, while I was wearing a stupid strapless dress, lessened just a tad. “I wish I hadn’t come.”

“I know.” Leaning closer, he softly added, “You’ll adjust, and it’ll be fine.”

“I made a fool of myself.”

“Are you kidding me?” My eyes flitted up to his, and this time he held onto them. I shook my head, and he smiled before saying, “All you’re missing is a crown.”

My forehead crinkled in confusion. “What?”

Leaning closer again, so he could whisper in my ear, he explained, “Forget being a princess. You look like a queen tonight.”

“Do queens wear these?” 

I flicked the bottom of my dress up, so he could see my boots, and he laughed. “I’m sure warrior queens do.” His eyes met mine again, and he sobered somewhat. “You truly are breathtaking.” 

He might mean that, but it wasn’t the way to this girl’s heart. Being there for me when I needed someone to be was. “You won’t leave my side?”

“Not a chance.” He was dead serious, and it made me feel a little better.

“What about Elena?”

“Stefan’s here. Let him deal with it.”

“We both know how they’ll deal with it.” They’d give Elena one-on-one time with Esther for sure.

“Then let ‘em.”

I closed my eyes, inhaled through my nose and exhaled slowly out my mouth to remain calm before looking up at him and nodding to let him know I’d let it go. It is what I’d been thinking the last few days, that they all needed to see the mistake they’d made before I did anything to help them. For some reason, it was hard to remember when I needed Damon to keep me grounded in a room full of people. High school wasn't great, but high school was really just a lot of people split up into many small rooms, so it was manageable if you used the quieter hallways to get from class to class. I rarely went into rooms with a lot of people at the Lockwood parties. Clubs were dark and easy to get around in without many people noticing. This place made you feel like you had a spotlight on you everywhere you went. 

They say when people feel threatened, they respond by fight, flight, or freeze responses. Well, I was more of a fight kind of person, so this situation must have me itching for one. Maybe that’s what was clouding my judgement and making me feel like I should stop Elena from talking to Esther instead of using this as a fact finding mission, the way I'd intended. “But if I have an opportunity to snoop, you’ll leave me to it and act as a lookout, right?”

“Trust me. With that dress, you're going to have eyes on you all night. You won’t have a chance to snoop, kill, or maim.”

I looked down at my dress and then up to him in moderate annoyance. “Is this a tactical dress?” 

He grinned. “Well if it wasn’t intended as one, it’s become one.”

“Then what am I even doing here?”

His smile fell, and a moment later, he asked, “Good question. I thought you were leaving town.”

“I am for a few days, but this is the perfect opportunity for reconnaissance on her considering I'm most likely on the outs with Klaus right now, AND . . . I wanted to see what game you’re playing.” I trailed off at the end and ducked my head. His posture relaxed, like maybe he’d heard something that he’d needed to hear in what I’d said, but if he had, he didn’t draw attention to what it was. Instead, he offered me his hand and asked if I wanted to dance. “All I heard of his speech was something about a centuries old waltz. I doubt I know it.”

“Just follow my lead.” 

I took his hand before saying, “But how do you know it? How do any of these people know it who aren’t the Mikaelson’s? Are they all paired up with vampires that know, or – “ 

With one his more charming smiles, he looked down at me. “It’s just like any other time we’ve danced. Follow my lead. I won’t steer you wrong.”

We lined up with some other people who were dancing, and I glanced up at him. How did these people know to line up like this? Were they simply following the Mikaelson’s lead? “But I really need to know, because I find it very strange, and until I know, it’s all I’ll be able to think about.”

He muttered, “Always so difficult,” under his breath before looking down at me over his shoulder. He smiled briefly and said, “I don’t know, Evie . . . Looking around, half the couples in here have a vampire in the pairing. The vampires, who are 1000 years old, definitely know this from way back when, and Stefan and I have been around long enough to run into this dance a time or two. My guess is that the other half are . . . compelled or professional dancers?” 

“Oh.” Yeah, that made sense. 

His smile grew. “Happy?”

Looking around at the other couples to see if I could find any that might look like they were from out of town, I nodded. “Yeah, that’ll do.”

“Happy to oblige.” Standing side-by-side, he took my hands, so we were in the right hold as the music started and then added, “Oh, and by the way, we’ll be switching partners,” as he took a step forward.

Following his lead, I shook my head. “I’m not doing that. I’ve only ever danced with you and my Mom. I’m not looking to change that trend tonight.”

I heard him chuckle and looked up at him. “That’s how you learned to dance?”

“Well, who else would have taught me, my Dad? He could fight, but he had two left feet.”

He snorted silently. “Yeah, I can’t see John being much of a dancer at all.”

We turned and stopped to bow to the row across from us before moving towards them. After we'd gone past them, I said, “I like that.” When we got to the other side, we stopped, and he spun me into a more traditional hold, so that I was in front of him, and that felt way more comfortable to me. “I like that I can say something to you about my parents, because even though you hated them, I know you saw it . . . It may not have been for more than 5 minutes with each of them, but you saw the human side of both my parents when it came to me. They both lost it over the years, but I know that if you saw it, then it must have been real.” 

When I looked up at him, he was watching me intently. “Yeah, I saw it . . . You don’t talk about them the way you used to talk about them.”

“As often?”

His head shook slightly before he added, “And you’re not sure of them as you used to be . . . or you weren’t.”

Until my Mom came back? If he was angling to get me to tell him one more time that my Mom was right about killing Klaus, then I wasn’t going to take the bait. I’d talked myself out on that one. Right now, I was simply looking forward to being able to say, ‘I was right,’ or better yet hearing him say, ‘You were right,’ and then I’d let it go. “I guess time has a way of making you question things and forget, so you focus on a few things that really stood out both good and bad.”

His eyes flitted down my face as he said, “That’s as good a way to put it as I’ve heard.” A moment later, he added, “You ready to swap?”

“I don’t like people I don’t know touching me. It might get violent.”

He smiled before saying, “It’s just Stefan.”

“Then it’ll definitely get violent.”

“You’ll never leave my sight, and if after him, you want to stop, come find me.”

My mood immediately fell. “You want me to talk to him.”

“He needs our help.”

“He needs your help.”

“No, he needs both of us. You don’t have to do anything different. You give him the brutal honesty he needs.”

My brow furrowed. “And you don’t?”

“I do, but it’s different with you. You’re a lot more like Lexi when you do it. They may have been best friends, but she never went easy on him. Not that you’re like Lexi. It’s just that . . . Look, you actually agree with me that going off human blood cold turkey isn’t what’s best for him.” 

I may feel a bit better after letting him know how I felt earlier, and I might feel relieved to have him here as my anchor, but I hadn’t wanted to help them with anything until they acknowledged that I was right, they were wrong, and I wasn’t the enemy or a nuisance they seemed to think I was . . . but this was a little different, wasn’t it? It didn’t really have anything to do with helping them with their Klaus problem. Damon was asking for help with his brother's ripper problem. “He’s gone off it again?”

“The signs are there if you look, and he’s struggling to stay off it.”

“Which starts the whole vicious cycle again without addressing the underlying issues.”

As we stepped away from one another, he said, “See, you get it . . . now go get him.”

Before I could respond, I was spun under his arm and directly into Stefan. I took a step back. Damon might want me to talk to him, but did that have to include dancing? “Well, this is awkward.”

Placing my hand on his shoulder as he took my other hand, he muttered, “Thanks for stating the obvious . . . People are watching. We need to dance.”

Taking my hands back, I quickly said, “You mean you need to keep me here, so Elena can have her meeting with Esther.”

“Potato. Potahto.”

“Well, lucky for you, I’ve decided not to get involved.”

“And yet you’re here.”

“Recon.”

“Uh huh.”

“Have I said or done anything in the last week that would make you think that I’d do anything for you people again?” His face may hold no emotion, but his eyes flitted down to the side. I took that to mean he felt bad about something, but he wasn’t going to indulge it for very long. “Can we agree that my head will remain on my shoulders with my neck in tact?” 

“Can we agree that you won’t stab me with one of the stakes you’ve got hidden inside that dress?” Yeah, I had a couple of those. 

“As long as my condition is met. I can’t make an promises about any vervain darts I may or may not have on me.” I put my hands back where he’d had them, and he sighed before taking his first step. As a bad ice breaker, I asked, “What are you doing here anyway? Don’t you have a car to fix?”

Stoic as ever, the only thing that gave away any kind of emotion was another slight sigh. “I think we both know it’s a write off.”

There was a part of him that loved that car even if he kept it hidden under a tarp most of the time, either to protect it or hide something he was embarrassed about, something like how it went against the humble perception he wanted to project to the world. If that was the reason, then it was as much of a problem as him cutting out human blood altogether. There was the real Stefan, and then there was the Stefan that lost control, and there was the Stefan he wanted the world to see who hid both. “I don’t know. It’s not a million miles away from how my car looked when I got it. No engine or transmission. No steering system. No tires. No braking system. Obviously no suspension . . . I have no idea how you managed it, but the frame itself is fine. Any bodywork beyond that would be an easy fix if you put some time in on it. The detailing might be more difficult to get right, because of the car’s age, but I’m sure you could find those parts online somewhere.”

“Are we talking about my car, or me?”

Had he ever really been talking about the car? “Just your car. I wouldn’t be so nice if I was talking about you.” We did a turn, and I bit my bottom lip before saying, “Although, I suppose a case could be made that the same is true of you. Somewhere under there lies something that can probably be salvaged. You may never be the same again, but that’s not a bad thing. Who you were before is who you thought you should be instead of who you are, and that’s a problem.”

“You have no idea who I really am.”

Leaning marginally closer, I spitefully whispered, “You forget that I’ve seen just about every side of you there is.” He looked away from me with another sigh and went to let me go, but I held firmly onto him without looking like I was to anyone else and most definitely took the lead on our dance. His attention came back to me, and I added, “And the real you isn’t a ripper. He isn’t a boy scout either. He’s somewhere in between . . . a little dark, but not all bad . . . and going cold turkey is a problem. Listen to your brother when he says that to you. He isn’t saying it to trip you up. He’s saying it because he’s right. You’re not an alcoholic, Stefan. Stop comparing your addiction to a human one. You need that natural edge that being a vampire gives you. Dulling it dulls your mind as well as your natural abilities, and you need both to survive, but you also need both to ensure those around you survive and to prevent yourself from losing total control. By fighting what you are, you’re actually fighting your ability to control what you are. Moderation, Stefan, that is the key.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I do and I don’t. I don’t understand what it’s like to have that kind of a craving, but I’ve studied up on and killed enough rippers to know a little bit about you guys. You treat yourselves like blood junkies instead of addressing the real issue. You don’t want to be a vampire.” He didn’t say anything, but he did take the lead back, so I tried, “It’s a battle you can’t win, because you are a vampire. You are designed to love the hunt. You’re designed to love the blood. You’re designed to love the killing.” He went to let me go again, but I smoothly held onto him by saying, “You can’t admit it to yourself, but it’s true . . . and it’s not bad.” 

When his attention came back to me, I added, “It’s simply a part of your biology and instead of acknowledging it and accepting it, so you can learn how to harness it, you deny it, and it grows into a beast of its own that is just waiting for an opportunity to take your control away from you.”

“I started out as a ripper.”

He was watching me to see what I did with that, but it didn’t contradict what I’d said. “I know, but I also know who your first kill was. I’m guessing there were a lot of emotions tied up with that, especially, since you’re a vampire, and if it didn’t make you feel guilt that needed to be dampened by another kill almost straight away, then feeling guilty for not feeling guilty probably was. Not a good start.”

“Do you have any idea how many people I’ve killed?” 

“I did when I moved here, but you were gone for a few months and judging from what I saw when I was with you on the road, I’m guessing those months upped the tally quite a bit.” He looked away from me, and I added, “I had no idea you were the Ripper of Monterey though.” When his attention came back to me, I smiled briefly. “You’re a legend . . . maybe an infamous legend, but a legend nonetheless. I grew up listening to bedtime stories about you.”

“It’s nothing to brag about.”

My smile grew. “Maybe not for you, but I kicked your ass, so . . . “

He rolled his eyes. “Are you really going on a hunt?”

“Yep.”

“Alone?”

Absolutely. “I’ve been on lots of hunts by myself.”

“Define lots.”

What was he getting at? “What, I’m supposed to know how many hunts I’ve done? I don’t.”

“So, you have no idea how many vampires you’ve killed?”

“Nope.”

“You don’t feel bad about any of it?”

Oh. I think I saw where this was going now. If I kept a list like he did, then he thought it meant I felt remorse the way he did. He was talking killer to killer right now. “Usually not the killing unless it was someone, like Mason, who didn’t deserve it. Mostly, it’s just the torturing I feel bad about. I’m really way too gifted at the wrong things.”

He missed a step, but quickly recovered. “Were you really going to drown me in the bathtub?” I smiled wickedly in response. “Damon seemed to think you were planning on doing it more than once.” 

“Until you felt real genuine fear and begged me to stop.” He stumbled again, then stopped dancing all together, and I smirked before saying, “Too much?” Damon sure thought so.

“You wanted me to feel something other than anger.” He said it like he was sure of my motivations. My smile wavered before it disappeared altogether, and I simply nodded as he picked up his steps again. “Why didn’t you?”

“Um, Damon convinced me to get my point across without using violence.”

“So, now you’re stuck on me fixing my car.”

“I guess.”

His eyes swept the crowd before he looked down at me and said, “Kol’s up next. Do you want – “

I let go of him and stepped away. “Yeah, no. I don’t know him, and I sort of have something of his, so if it’s all right, I think I’m done.”

Stepping closer, he was quick to ask, “What of his do you have?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know? Too bad you pissed me off, and I’m no longer on your team.”

“Eve – “

“Nope. I’m a free agent, which means everything up here – “ I paused to tap my temple. “Is now on lock down and 100% confidential.”

“Is it his dagger?”

I rolled my eyes. “Were you not listening?”

“Come on, you haven’t said whether you took those daggers or if it was Elijah after you took his dagger.”

I knew where all the daggers were, and I had what I considered to be my dagger on me at all times now, but I wasn’t telling him that. Leaning closer, I gave him a sweet smile and whispered, “Well, now those are Klaus’s daggers that he uses on them, so they aren’t really their daggers, are they?”

“What of his do you have, Eve?”

I gave him an impish grin before doing a small curtsy. “Thank you for the dance, Stefan. I’ll see you around.” 

I turned to go find Damon before Stefan could ask me anything else, and we spent the next while watching what our hosts were doing without really looking like we were. Most of the time we were together. Sometimes we were a few steps away from one another, while he talked to someone else, and I contemplated making a move for one of the darker hallways. It was during one of these moments that I noticed someone walking directly towards me from the left. Before she even got to me, she let herself be known. “Oh my God, what are you wearing, Eve?!” 

I tossed a look at Caroline over my shoulder before deciding that shoulder was really quite cold and turning away from her. “A dress.” 

She grabbed a hold of the bottom half of my dress and pulled it up to expose my boots, while she said, “I’m talking about these.”

I swatted her hand away. “People can’t see them unless you do that. They’re under the dress.”

“I can see them.”

See. There were always people who noticed, people like her. Turning away from her again, I coldly said, “Then look away.”

“Well, who helped you get dressed?”

“I can dress myself, Caroline.”

“Clearly not.” I continued ignoring her, and she finally said, “Eve, I’m really trying here.” Yeah, I suppose Caroline’s way of trying might include insulting you, especially when she was nervous. I flicked another glance in her direction, and she took a deep breath before saying, “I heard what happened.”

Would’ve been good if she’d come to the conclusion on her own that I hadn’t intentionally let a werewolf get past me and attack her Dad, but okay. I gave her a little more of my attention. “From?”

“Well, Tyler left a message that didn’t make a whole lot of sense, so I asked my Dad about it, and . . . well, I couldn’t stay there after that. I’m sorry . . . but in fairness to me, you didn’t tell me, so how was I supposed to know?”

Guess my theory that her Dad had gotten rid of her had been wrong. “For one, I don’t really want it advertised. It makes me look bad.”

“Worse than letting me think you did it on purpose?”

Uh, yeah, it definitely did. “In some ways, yes, AND I shouldn’t have to tell you I didn’t do it on purpose. That shouldn’t have been your first thought.”

“Well, I can’t help what my first thought was. I mean, you did hurt him before . . . twice, and – “

“Caroline.”

“Okay, fine. I’m just sorry, okay? Can we go back to being friends again?”

Oh. That was a new one. “I never really thought we weren’t friends, just that you were really annoying me.” She threw herself forward and wrapped me up in a suffocating hug. She forgot how strong she was sometimes. I patted her on the shoulder awkwardly and added, “And I guess I’m sorry I assumed you annoyed your Dad to the point that he kicked you out, and that’s why you’re back in town.”

Her eyes narrowed as she stepped back, and I shrugged. “What? I can’t help what my first thought was.” 

She opened her mouth, and Damon stepped next to me to interject. “That’s what she does. She says she doesn’t hold it against you, and she doesn’t, but she does until she doesn’t. She’s really giving you a chance not to screw up until she really means she doesn’t.” 

Her glare darkened as she looked up at him. “I don’t need tips from you on Eve. I know her too, and I know that it’s not as simple as that. She was hurt, and now she’s pushing back to test me the way she does new people until I prove to her that I won’t hurt her again.”

Not wanting to be outdone, Damon exclaimed, “That’s what I said!”

Well, this got awkward pretty fast. “No, you said – “

“Ladies.” Klaus stepped up next to Caroline to defuse the situation as he handed her a glass, and she rolled her eyes. It would appear that she’d been trying to dodge him, and he hadn’t taken the hint. “Eve, you look lovely this evening.”

“I’ve been told my foot ware is all wrong.” 

Leaning into his shoulder, Caroline whispered loudly, “She doesn’t like compliments. That’s her way of counteracting them,” and I sighed before looking away from the group.

“And what I really love is for people to study me and treat me like I’m a novel that needs to be dissected. Is there an Eve course out there that I don’t know about?”

Caroline flicked her eyes in my direction, and then leaned into Klaus again to whisper, “We’re in the process of making up, so she’s being extra prickly to test me, but it’s a test I’m determined to pass.”

I stared at her, a little at a loss for words, and then blinked before grabbing Caroline’s hand to pull her away from them. When I got her far enough away to feel like we had some privacy, but probably not far enough away for them not to hear if they really tried, I stopped and said, “If you’re trying to prove you’re sorry by showing me how well you think you know me, I get it . . . You have nothing to prove. Just stop it.” 

Her lower lip jutted out, and she immediately looked like she was going to cry. Now I felt like an ogre. With a sigh, I stepped forward to give her a hug and whispered, so nobody else would hear, “This isn’t the place for it.” She nodded in understanding. The Mikaelson’s, and especially Klaus, didn’t need to know more about me than they already did. “And if you’re finding it necessary to translate what I’m saying in an effort to protect yourself from me hurting your feelings, then I’m sorry.” 

She nodded again with a sniff before saying, “I just thought Tyler - I didn’t know it was my Dad that put you in the hospital, and you still saved him . . . I’m sorry.”

I let her go. “Yeah, well don’t paint me as some kind of saint. I was still a little slow to put a stop to it.”

“But you still did the right thing in the end.”

I dryly retorted, “I really didn’t want to.”

It was her turn to get annoyed with me. “Will you stop it? I’m trying to say thank you.” I thought the little stomp of her foot was a nice touch.

“No thanks necessary.”

“Eve – “ I cut her off with a frustrated sigh that she soon mirrored. A moment later, she relaxed. “We’re really okay?”

“Yep.”

“How’s practice been?”

I exhaled a silent laugh. “Boring. I haven’t been able to practice. I’ve been in a sling.”

“You’re not wearing it now.”

“I coat checked it. I’ll probably put it back on when I leave.” 

Her eyes traveled to my shoulders. “Shouldn’t you be wearing it at all times?”

Oh no. I did not need her fussing over me, especially when there was nothing wrong. “I’m going away for a few days. I’ll be fine when I come back.”

Taking my arm as we walked back to where we’d been, she asked, “How?” and I shot her a look that said she knew how. “Well, where are you going?”

“There’s a hunt I have to do.”

“Out of town?” I nodded, and she asked, “Is that safe?”

What hunt is safe? “I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure, because I could always go with you if – “

“How’s your date with Klaus?”

Her head whipped in my direction, and she was half a second away from disputing that, but she caught herself before she did. “You’re only saying that to distract me . . . what’s wrong with this hunt?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why can’t I go?”

“It’s something I need to do, and I need to do it alone.” Before she could say anything else, I tried, “Anyway, I think the squad needs you more than I do. You’ve been away from them for too long as it is. They’re all slacking. The new formation of yours has gone to shit, and Tiki is making a power play for the captaincy.”

“Seriously?!”

“Yep.”

“Ugh, I’m gonna kill her!”

She went to walk off somewhere else to do who knew what until I said, “Okay, just make sure you do a good job of hiding the body,” and then she stopped to look at me over her shoulder.

“I’m not really going to kill her. I’ve just got some calls to make.”

“Good, because I’m not helping you dig a grave, and I do know where the nearest crematorium is, but I’m not helping you drive her there either. It’s across state lines, and that makes it federal.”

She hesitated for a moment before smiling as she turned to keep going. Yeah, I was only half-joking. I hated body disposal. As she left, I finally caught sight of my sister again. Guess her meeting with Esther hadn’t ended with her being dead. I could go talk to her and find out what happened. She probably wouldn’t tell me, but I bet she’d tell someone else, so if I followed her for a while, it’d only be a matter of time before I knew what happened in that meeting. I glanced back at Damon, because I had asked him to stay with me tonight, and it seemed a little rude just to ditch him now. He was talking to some busy-body on the council who thought everyone was a vampire and always wanted us to check out the people on her list. 

I could go save him, but I wanted information, and as if sensing my dilemma, he looked up at me, saw where my body was facing and then tilted his head in Elena’s direction, like if I wanted to go talk to her he’d be fine. I guess her job was done. He didn’t have to worry about me interfering with it, so now I could talk to her. Maybe I was being a little harsh, and that’s not why he’d kept me entertained all night, but me not being able to know which it was for sure was part of the problem now. Discreetly watching to make sure Elena stayed where she was, I started walking in a wide arch, so I could walk up behind her without her knowing. I was about a quarter of the room away when Elijah went over to her, and I felt the need to hurry up, so I could hear what was being said. 

I got to a place behind the column they were standing by just as he asked, “Elena, should I be concerned about my mother’s intentions?” and it took everything I had not to do a happy dance where I stood. Finally, someone who agreed with me that that woman wasn’t to be trusted! 

“She just wanted to apologize for trying to have me killed.”

Bullshit that’s what she’d wanted. Not seeming to believe Elena any more than I did, Elijah gave her another opportunity to come clean. “So, it’s true then? She’s forgiven Klaus.”

There was the briefest of pauses, and then Elena quietly said, “It’s true.” Well that was useful information to have. When she out right lied and was nervous about it, her voice went up in pitch. I stepped out from behind the pillar when there was the clinking of a glass to get everyone's attention. It would seem that Esther needed the spotlight again. My instincts immediately kicked in at the sight of her. It was strange. Hadn’t she already had her moment when her son was giving a speech in honor of her? 

I mean, isn’t that why we’d had to do the damn dance, because it’s something they did whenever their mother had a party? Apparently waiters were coming around with glasses of champagne. Why was she making such a big deal out of it, and why were they pink? All night people had been drinking classic white champagne, but this little speech of hers required pink champagne? As she started her toast, I watched Elena. Why did she look nervous? Well, there was letting this thing blow up in my ex-team’s face, and then there was me being a free agent, who worked my own agenda without talking to any of them about what I was doing. I took a glass of the pink stuff, stepped up to Elena’s side, and innocently asked, “Isn’t this a little obvious?”

Elena’s head turned in my direction. “I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

“Well, whatever she’s done to the champagne . . . it’s obvious she’s wants us to drink it. Now, why is that, _Elena_?”

Her eyes widened the slightest bit as she put her hand on my chest to push me a few feet away from Elijah and hissed, “What are you even still doing here? I thought you were leaving town!”

“Don’t worry. I am. Of course, I do plan on coming back after my business trip is over, so I want to make sure this place is still standing when I do.” 

She tried to take my glass away from me, but I held it just out of her reach as she growled, “You need to leave . . . now.” 

Hm. Was everyone here being drugged? Why would she be a part of that? Was she so dead set on killing Klaus that she’d risk everyone else being dosed with whatever Esther had in this champagne? She might if it only did something to the Originals, but why wouldn’t she want me to drink it too if it was safe for everyone? What did she know? Was there some kind of a fail safe put in place to stop me as well? Had she sacrificed me to get what she wanted? I mean she had to have done that, right? 

She’d had no idea that I’d be spying on her when this toast happened, which meant she hadn’t known that I wouldn’t be near enough for her to stop me from drinking this if I was still here, and she hadn’t come looking for me to tell me not to drink this. Her first instinct at seeing me hadn't even been to try and take the glass. It was to get me away from Elijah. I looked down at my glass as the toast was coming to an end, feeling hurt, angry, and betrayed once again, but I think I covered it pretty well. _You wanna see how manipulating a situation, while keeping your hands clean, is really done, Elena? Here’s how it’s done._ “Well, I can’t really go before I get my free drink, can I?” 

I went to lift it to my lips, and she reached for it again. “You can’t drink and drive.”

Pulling it away from her and putting my forearm into her chest to keep her away from me, as she reached for it, I responded, “One glass won’t hurt,” as I attempted to drink it again.

She struggled against me. “You’re under age.”

“You’re the same goddamn age, and you’re drinking.”

I finally let her knock my glass onto the floor, and it shattered into a hundred pieces. That should be enough to stop some people from drinking the champagne. Here’s how you get all of them to stop if they haven’t drank any yet. Ignoring the looks we must’ve gotten, I immediately looked from the shattered glass to her stupid smug expression and took a step closer as I flicked her right between the eyes with my finger. “What did you do?!”

“What do you mean, what did I do? I stopped you from driving while intox–“ I flicked her in the forehead again, and this time she yelled, “Ow! Stop doing that!”

“Stop lying!”

“I’m protecting you!”

Stepping into her space, I came almost nose to nose with her as I spat out, “Liar. What you’re doing is damage control, because you were willing to sacrifice me to get what you wanted. Maybe you thought I wouldn’t still be here, but you sure as hell didn’t go looking for me to make sure I wasn’t here for the toast, because whatever deals you made in the back rooms of this house, I wasn’t a consideration in the slightest when you were making them . . . just collateral damage you forgot about until you saw me again.”

In apprehension, she looked around, “Eve – “

“What, you don’t want the gifted listeners in the room to hear us and start asking all kinds of important questions? Too late.” I looked around the room, and pretty much everyone had stopped to watch our little spat. My eyes shot up to Esther on the staircase as I added, “Have fun with that,” before I turned to walk away, and that? That is how it’s done. Had I used her to get there? Absolutely. Was Elena the one everyone was going to be chasing for answers? Yep. Did I feel bad about it? Not at all. 

Damon stepped in front of me, and I couldn’t help myself. “Do you see it now? Win at all costs, right? And now I’m reduced to being collateral damage . . . a big nothing of any importance in your guys’ war. This is just the culmination of weeks of the rest of you doing the same thing. You’ve lost sight of your ultimate goal, and that is why I never wanted this to be a game.”

I went around him and the entrance was blocked by Kol and Rebekah. I wouldn’t say blocked. Maybe they were just choosing there to stand and talk, but I didn’t think that I should go that way, so I darted down a side hallway and only stopped after I’d retreated when I heard Elena, behind me, ask, “Why did you do that?”

“Told you I generally get in trouble for being too honest.”

“You call that honest?”

“I call that the epitome of honesty.”

I took a step, and she moved around me. “You wanna talk about honesty? Why did I have to hear from Stefan that it wasn’t Damon who saved me? It was you. He said you jumped off the bridge.”

Oh God. Why was it that when she did something she knew was wrong, she found something else she was angry about and used that to yell at you, so she could come out feeling like she was right? Well, I wasn’t giving it to her this time. “Because it doesn’t matter.”

I went to step around her, and she side-stepped to block me. “How can you say that? Of course it – “

“Hey!” Oh no. She had reinforcements. “What was that?” Caroline was standing next to me in almost no time at all. I’d exceeded my limit on being here tonight. 

Before I could say anything, she focused her attention on Elena. “Was she right? Was there something in that drink that could hurt her?”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Then why’d you say you were protecting her?!”

“Because she’s got a long drive ahead of her, and – “

Caroline’s forehead scrunched up in anger as she said, “Oh, please. I’ve seen you drink 8 beers and drive home. What’d you do?”

I figured now was as good a time as any to bolt. Elena was distracted. Caroline was distracted. I’d started backing down the hall and heading to the main room when I heard Elena exclaim, “All I did was give her some of my blood,” and then I stopped. 

“You what?! I told you - ”

Elena looked over Caroline’s shoulder at me. “Like you care.”

Caroline looked from me to Elena. “Why would you give her your blood?”

I answered that one. “She needed her blood as some kind of a binding agent for a spell.”

Caroline turned back to Elena and asked her what I was thinking. “If it’s a spell that’s just against them, then why did you stop Eve from drinking it?”

“I – “ looking away from her, Elena shook her head. “I can’t say.”

“What do you mean you can’t say. You can tell me anything – blah, blah, blah.” As I listened to them start bickering, I figured that there wouldn’t be any answers tonight, because Elena was as determined to keep her secrets as I was, and she’d just turn this into an argument about something else anyway. I began my escape again and turned to see Elijah and Klaus standing at the entrance to the hall. They were talking. Their focus was entirely on one another, so I used that to go up the side stair case to my right. I could go around, go down the back staircase, out the back door, sneak around to the front, and get my sling back. I just needed to make sure I didn’t run into Esther while I was upstairs. 

For once, something worked out for me. My path was clear, and I made it outside. I was using the shadows to go back around to the front, so I could get my sling in case my stalker was watching, when a guy fell off the second story and landed right in front of the bushes I was hiding in. Less than a second later, a vampire jumped down after him, and I pulled my new favorite stake out of my ankle strap, ready to attack until I saw who it was and paused. My guy was winning. My eyes opened in wonder as I watched Damon snap Kol’s neck, and then Stefan came out shouting about something, but I wasn’t listening to him. I was watching Damon. He was upset about what I'd said to him in there . . . correction. He was upset because he knew what I said in there was right, and he was starting to blame himself for it. He looked angry and slightly unstable until I breathed out, “So hot,” under my breath without thinking, and his eyes immediately turned to me. 

He hadn’t known I was there, but it didn’t seem to matter as he relaxed. “You think so?”

I threw a glance at Kol’s body behind him and nodded before looking back up at him with a breathless laugh. “Yeah.” He just took on a 1000-year old vampire by himself and won purely because of his raw unhinged-aggression. This was the dark horse I’d placed all my bets on when I moved to this town. I exhaled another disbelieving laugh before saying, “I almost forgot how magnificent my blue-eyed angel of death could be when he's being a complete lunatic.” He took it as the compliment it was meant to be, and I looked to my left to see that what was left of the Original gang was standing in the doorway. “But maybe not the smartest.” 

They didn’t look like they were going to attack. They were probably used to this kind of thing. After watching them, I came to the conclusion that maybe Elijah was keeping his promise. Based on his body language, I'd say he was making sure they behaved. He'd either said something when I wasn't listening, or they knew enough not to go against him, or both, so I surreptitiously put my stake away. If they did attack, then I’d do what needed to be done to stop them, but there was no point in showing all my cards tonight if it wasn’t necessary.

“You should go.” My attention went back to Damon, and he was standing directly in front of me. “You shouldn’t be here for the fallout.”

He wasn’t talking about the fallout from his fight. He was talking about the fallout for whatever it was that Elena did tonight. I’m sure that would come out in the next couple of days. “I need my sling.”

“You obviously don’t need it, so why do you think you do?” I arched an eyebrow in response, and he sighed before looking over to the front door and then back down at me. “He’s back, isn’t he? It’s tied in with what happened when Little Gilbert – “ I put my finger to his lips to silence him, and shook my head. I didn’t want the long distance listeners at the door hearing anything. If we were ever going to be a team again, then I needed things to go back to being just between the two of us the way it used to be. That is when we functioned at our best, and Klaus may think that demon die was in good hands with me, but there’s nothing to say that the rest of them wouldn’t want to try and take it. Maybe it’s even something their Mom might need for some reason, and if she heard them talking about it, there could be additional problems. They may have no interest in it at all. I didn’t know, but I wasn’t willing to chance it. 

He nodded to let me know he understood, and I removed my finger. He leaned down to whisper in my ear, “There really is a hunt?” I nodded. “And you think the hunter will follow you?” I nodded again, and there was brief pause before he sighed as he fought hard against his instincts that said he had to protect me. “I love you.” 

I whispered back, “I know,” and he smiled.

“Still won’t say it?”

“Yeah, well, I am coming back, so you’ll have some time to eventually drag it out of me.”

"Little hard to do if you think I'm not on your side."

We weren't going to fix everything in a night. "There will be time for that too."

“Challenge accepted.” He backed away and smiled before looking over at the doorway again. Not all the Mikaelson’s were there. It seems they may have picked their fallen brother up before anyone in the party could see, but it was still probably smarter if he didn’t get too close to that Fin or Rebekah. He tossed a look at Stefan. “You mind getting her sling?” 

Caroline was already waiting just inside the door with it, because she hadn’t forgotten about me needing it and handed it to him. I went to go get it, and when I looked back, Damon was already gone. It didn’t take me long to put the sling on and get out of there. The first chance I had, I stopped at a rest stop, so I could change out of these clothes. It was quiet, secluded, and as always, I was vigilant. That may be why when I popped the trunk and went around to open it only to find someone hiding inside that I punched him full force in the jaw before realizing who it was. It wasn't until he brought his arms up to protect his head that I did. “Jeremy! What the hell are you doing here?”


	58. Not What I Intended

Jeremy involuntarily brought his arms up to cover his head with a groan and then laughed. “Wow . . . guess I was right to pick the trunk. I thought if I was in the backseat, you might shoot me.”

So the hunter hadn’t knocked him out and put him in here as another message? He’d done this to himself? Are you freaking kidding me?! I stepped back while he sat up. “You’re lucky I didn’t have a stake in my hand, or you – “

“Yeah, but you don’t.”

“But I could have.”

He snorted as he climbed out. “But you don’t.”

“I usually would if I was in the middle of nowhere by myself. It’s just with this stupid sling – “

He exhaled a laugh as he rubbed his jaw and said, “That’s gonna leave a mark.”

Yeah, it was. It was already going a deep purple, but I was more worried about me. I flicked my hand open a couple of times to test it out, but I didn’t think anything was broken. It was still going to swell, and this is exactly why you packed a punch, so it wouldn’t fuck up your hand so much. I pushed past him to get my first aid kit out, so I could find a cold pack. “Yeah, thanks for that, asshole.” When I found the pack and crushed it, he reached forward, and I pulled it away from him saying, “Oh, you think this is for you? Get your own damn cold pack. Then get it in the car while I change, and I’ll take you back.”

His humor at the situation almost immediately disappeared. “I’m not going back.”

I’d actually made a break for it without anyone else crashing my hunt, and the last person I thought would crash it had decided to do just that. “Yes, you are, Jeremy. You just haven’t accepted it yet.”

“And how long do you think it’s going to take before anyone even notices I’m gone?”

I opened my mouth to answer and then closed it when I thought about it. Ouch. “I’m fairly certain Imelda will notice?” Yeah, that’s not what he’d meant. “I don’t know. Elena is wrapped up in - “

“When isn’t she wrapped up with something else that’s more important?!” 

With a sigh, I turned to lean next to him on the back of my car. “I’m not taking a trip to Disney World.”

“I know.” He nodded before looking down at me. “I heard Elena talking to Bonnie about it on the phone before she left for the party.”

Of course he did. I mean, I am the one who was in the process of turning him into a spy. In my defense, he was a little brother, so it’s not like he needed much training on how to be a spy in his own home. “And look at you now. You’re not even 50 miles from home, and you’re face is all messed up. It only goes downhill from here, kid.”

He nodded toward my sling. “Like you’re one to talk.”

I looked around us to see if there was anyone nearby. If my stalker was following, then he wasn’t here. He was probably parked up the road . . . maybe he’d gone on foot from there to get closer, but I wouldn’t. This place had one entrance in and out, so if I were him, I’d wait for us to leave and pick up the trail again instead of getting out of the vehicle and risking that we’d drive out of here faster than he could get back to it. That’s a good way to lose someone. Leaning into Jeremy’s shoulder, I whispered, “It’s for show . . . I got thrown into a wall over the weekend and had to take some vampire blood.”

“Why would you keep wearing – “

“Our hunter is back, and I’m luring him out of town . . . I need him to think I’m weaker than I am.”

Sitting forward in total interest, Jeremy looked around himself before whispering, “You mean the guy Stefan killed?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he a – “

No, he wasn’t a vampire. “He’s back courtesy of you. You probably remember dying . . . He sort of used your life force as a battery pack to get him going again. You’re just lucky you were wearing the ring, or it would’ve been more permanent. I actually don’t know if you having that ring is going to mess with him being alive. Is he half-alive? Is he weaker than usual? Is there something wrong with him? Is there something wrong with you? Is he you? Did you swap bodies? I mean it is rightfully your life force, so you should be okay as long as you wear that ring, but if you take it off . . . don’t take it off. It might be the only thing keeping you both alive. ”

“I’m not him.”

I looked up at him over my shoulder. “I’m sure that’s what he would say . . . If I don’t see some noticeable signs over the next few days that he is following us, then I’m going to assume you’re him, and you’re done.” 

He laughed until he saw I wasn’t joking, and then his smile fell. “You wouldn’t kill me.”

“Maybe not, but I’ll take you back to Imelda and make her fix it.”

“Wait, you said if he’s following us . . . You’re not taking me back?”

Like I had time to be chauffeuring him all over Virginia. I really was on a time schedule here. Besides, now I had a chance to test that body swapping theory, so I might as well do it, while I could. “I feel like now would be a good time for me to point out that you should be in school.”

“Did you just call me dumb?”

“Well, I either meant that or that you’re not very observant. You choose.”

As I stood to grab my bag of clothes, he said, “You’re angry.”

“Angry? No. I just plan on making you wish you’d stayed with your negligent sister, so something like this never happens again.” I stopped to look at him over my shoulder as I passed by him on my way to the bathroom and added, “And when I get back, we’re going over some ground rules.” I just had to think of them first. 

The second I got into the bathroom, I called Damon. _”Miss me already?”_

_”I have Jeremy.”_

_”Oh yeah? Is this your ransom call?”_

I smiled as I said, “ _I wish. Unfortunately, he’s assured me that there’s nobody there who would pay it . . . I was going to bring him back, but now we’re doing an experiment to see how long it is before anyone notices he’s gone. Before the cops are called, you might want to let Elena know he’s with me.”_

_”So not too soon, but before the cops are called.”_

_”Yeah. Feel free to have some fun with it.”_

There was a brief pause, and then he said, _”Are you sure him being there isn’t going to be a distraction you don’t need, because if it is, tell me where you are, and I’ll come pick him up.”_

I thought about it. It was a solid offer and one I should probably accept, but something about it didn’t feel right. Jeremy had a statement to make to the people in his life, and who was I to rob him of that, a responsible adult who was putting his safety first? Well, the kid hadn’t been safe since the day his sister met Stefan. He certainly wasn’t safe with Klaus wanting her blood, and that was true whether or not he lived with Imelda, because if you told him to stay in the house with her, he wouldn’t, and then he could be taken and used as leverage. Hell, after tonight, one of the other Mikaelson’s might try to do just that to find out what Elena knew, or if it was Esther, to force Elena to continue on with their plan, whatever that was. Really, the best thing for Jeremy would be for him to leave town. Maybe this road trip would entice him to do that by opening him up to the world outside of Mystic Falls, except it wasn’t a road trip, was it? It was a hunting trip, and Jeremy didn’t like to listen unless it was something he wanted to hear, and that could be a problem. _”Would Savannah be too far to drive?”_

_”Not at all.”_

Damon waited for me to explain, because I was obviously nowhere near Savannah yet, and I eventually said, _”Then I’ll keep your offer in mind, and if it becomes a problem, I will let you know.”_

After we hung up, I changed clothes and used the time I had to make up some rules. There was really only one that mattered. It was more of a blanket rule that covered any and all small rules that I may or may not forget. When I got back to the car, he still hadn’t gotten into it, and the first thing out of his mouth was an accusatory, “You called Elena, didn’t you?”

Tossing my gym bag back into the trunk, I gave my head a shake. “I called Damon and told him to tell her where you are if and when she notices you’re gone, so I don’t get thrown in jail for kidnapping.” 

“Seriously?!”

That was a decidedly much happier sounding, ‘Seriously?’ than Caroline’s usually were. While I rearranged my trunk after he’d screwed it up to hide in there, I muttered, “Don’t get too excited. I also have my rules. Essentially, you do what I say, when I say, no questions asked, or I’m calling Damon, and he’s going to come pick you up. So, like, if I say jump, you don’t ask how high. You just jump. If I say drop, you drop and don’t ask why. Understood?” I finished my reorganizing and rested my hand casually on the lid of the trunk to await his response. If I told him to stay in the hotel room, then he’d damn well better stay in the hotel room.

He gave me a toothy grin and nodded. “Understood.”

 _He says that, but does he really mean it?_ “Then drop.”

His smile fell. “What?”

Since the side of my torso wearing the sling was directed away from him, he hadn’t noticed that I’d slipped my arm out of it in anticipation of this reaction. Before he knew what was happening, my right foot went behind his heel at the same time both my hands went to his shoulders to push him back, and I dropped him in about a second. I leaned down to look at him, and he didn’t seem happy at all, so before he could bitch about it, I asked, “Have you seen how fast vampires move?” The anger in his face smoothed out before he nodded, and I said, “Do you think I have time to do that every time I tell you to drop? A second here and there could be the difference between life and death for both you and me . . . that is why you can’t question me. It’s not because I’m a dictator. There just isn’t time for it . . . and if I tell you to do something, like stay in one place, you do it, because I have a reason for telling you that even though I may not have time to get into the reasons why just then. When this is all over, and we’re on our way back to Mystic Falls, then you can ask me all the questions you want. Got it?” 

There was a noticeable pause on his part before he eventually nodded, and I offered him a hand up, which he took. As I closed the lid to my trunk, he asked, “Is that really the best way you could think of getting your point across?”

I’d really wanted to get away from living my life under a microscope with these people. “Would you rather I treat you with kid gloves?” 

He hesitated again before shaking his head. “I’d rather learn how to do this right.”

He wasn’t going to make this easy on me, was he? There was letting him go with me to Savannah, so I could make sure he was really him and so he could get away for a while if he was him, and then there was letting him hunt with me. Elena knew more than he did about protecting herself now, and there’s no way in hell I’d bring her with me to hunt. I played dumb and hoped he’d change his mind. “Do what right?”

“I want to learn how to be a hunter.”

Damn. Walking around to the driver’s seat, I asked, “And what are your motivations?”

“Huh?”

I rolled my eyes as I threw my door open and got into the car. He got into the passenger seat, and I said, “Why? Why do you want to become a hunter?”

As I put my keys in the ignition, he responded, “Are you kidding me? Everything that has gone wrong in our lives started the day vampires moved into town.”

Yeah, that was a typical starting off point for most vampire hunters. Either a vampire killed someone they loved or did something to them that they wanted to avenge. In Jeremy’s case, he’d lost his first love to vampires. He fell in puppy love with a vampire, and she died too, which may not have been her fault . . . come to think of it, that’d been my Dad’s doing too . . . Anyway, she died, which hurt him enough that he tried to end the pain by becoming a vampire himself. He was killed by a vampire. He’d been possessed by a hybrid for about a day. He lost Jenna to that same hybrid. He was helping Damon and wound up being killed by Liz. Anna came back into his life and kept him from feeling so alone, but then she left to go be with her Mom, which was really more of an amicable break up and would have been a normal part of growing up if she hadn’t been a ghost when it happened. Because of that, he broke up with Bonnie. Then there was what I considered the most obvious reason for why he disliked vampires. His sister was consistently wrapped up in vampire affairs, which she seemed to place a higher value on than him. 

In fairness to her, she was involved with vampire business, because a lot of the time, supernatural beings, and especially vampires, tried to kill her or take her blood or harm her in some way. Plus, one of her best friends since childhood was also a vampire now too, so that would always bring it front and center for her, but his problem wasn’t with Caroline or even Elena wanting to protect herself from the likes of Klaus. His problem was that deep down, despite all the tragedies they’d brought into his life, he wasn’t sure that she would choose him if he told her that it was him or Stefan and Damon. In fairness to him, I wasn’t sure that he was wrong. The trouble from that part of her life that she continued to let flow into his life because she wouldn’t put him first was what was beginning to fuel a lot of his anger, and like the good little brother that he was, he wasn’t going to hate Elena. He was going to hate the thing he thought was taking her from him.

These were the motivations of someone who got into hunting for the wrong reasons. It wasn’t to help people, and that is what lead to so many hunters becoming monsters themselves. I had my work cut out for me if he was seriously thinking about becoming a hunter. His sister just wanted to learn how to protect herself. That was entirely different than learning to actively hunt, and I didn’t really want to be a part of training him for that. As I started the car, I countered what he’d said by saying, “You’ll never be the right kind of hunter if that’s why you want to do it, and if you’re not the right kind of hunter, then I won’t let you do it. Besides, everything started going wrong in your life when your parents died, not the day vampires moved to town.”

I shrugged off my sling, because I was getting sick of it and figured nobody would notice if I was wearing it in the car. I then tossed it in the back seat, while I reached back to find my case file. He wasn’t happy with me because of what I’d said, but he’d get over it. I handed him the file before pulling out of the parking space and added, “Read through that and convince me you should be a part of this hunt. I want you to tell me why I think there’s a hunt there, what we’re hunting, and where we should go to hunt as a start.”

“Or you could just tell me.”

He was going to push me this entire time, wasn’t he? Well, too bad for him, I was going to push right back. “Or you could go back home and go to school if reading through that is too much for you.”


	59. Finding A Last Minute Babysitter

We got into Savannah early in the morning, and I slept until the early afternoon before getting up to get this place ready for when Jeremy woke up, so now most of the contents of the case file were pinned up across the walls of our hotel room. There was also a big map of Savannah that Jeremy was currently studying on the table. We had about an hour before I needed to leave, and that is something I intended to do alone. While I wanted him to know that hunting could be boring, dangerous, and wasn’t glamorous, I didn’t want him to die. He couldn’t rely on his ring to keep bringing him back, and that ring of his wouldn’t stop him from losing an arm or a leg. 

The problem was that I wasn’t sure if I could trust him to stay in the motel room if I left him here alone. Taking care of him was turning out to be a pain in the ass. I mean, I liked Jeremy when I only had to see him for a short period of time before he went back home, but being around him all the time was kind of draining, because you had to do things like make sure he had somewhere to sleep and had food and didn’t die, and all the while, you knew he was just waiting to disagree with you on something, because he didn’t like to be told what to do. So, he definitely wasn’t coming with me tonight. Now, I just needed to wait for him to realize that too. It’d be much easier for everyone involved if he did.

The only thing working in his favor was that he was too young to fit the victim profile. None of the victims had been found, so the people who were missing was about all I had to go on for this case. Vampires were equal opportunity killers, but they definitely had preferences, and usually, you could tell a lot about a vampire by the victims they left behind. 

If the neck was ripped open and blood wasn’t drained, their neck was broken, or they had a heart removed, then they were simply at hand when a vampire got angry and lashed out for whatever reason. If there was a neck wound and the blood was drained, but the bodies were hidden, then the vampire had been hungry and went for the easiest target, but they’d be staying in the area. If the bodies weren’t hidden, then they were just passing through on their way somewhere else. If the victim wasn’t hidden and the neck was mauled with all the blood drained, or limbs had been torn off during the frenzy of the attack, then it was a ripper. If it was a victim that was either hidden or not, but there were neat bite marks and often on more than one body part, like the neck, arm, leg, shoulder, foot or wherever, then the vampire took their time, because they enjoyed that victim. 

Those victims were a vampire’s ‘type.’ It could be something general, like the vampire just preferred women, or it could be more specific, like hair or eye color, but something about those victims drew the vampire close, so here in Savannah, we had several young men that'd been taken, and that was the vampire’s choice victim . . . or at least it was for whoever was controlling the vampire here.

I checked my watch again. “Tick tock . . . tick tock.”

Jeremy threw a frustrated look in my direction. I was lounging comfortably on my bed, and the sight of me looking so calm seemed to make him huff in frustration. “You’re not helping.” Wasn’t really trying to help. Five minutes later, he finally gave up. “What am I missing? I get that there’s something weird going on around here, and I’m guessing that since you feel the need to be here that it’s a vampire, but how do you know that? How do you know it’s not a serial killer?”

Well, it should be obvious that it wasn’t a serial killer. I may not want him to come with me tonight, and our deal had been that if he asked me for help, then he couldn’t come, but I also wasn’t willing to take laziness as an excuse for him not putting together more than that in the time he’d had. My response was to simply lift an eyebrow, and he sighed again before hanging his head as he leaned against the table and studied the map. “Okay, so 3 people went missing 2 years ago and have been going missing every 2 years for the last 10.”

He wasn’t done, but I prompted him to go in the right direction to get to the solution. “And?”

His shoulders dropped as he continued studying the map that I’d told him would give him hints on at least two of my questions; what we were hunting and where to hunt. “And the same thing happened 100 years ago and 100 years before that, so whatever did this has either been alive that long . . . or it’s a family of serial killers?” He paused and then tried, “Or werewolves? The Lockwoods have been living in Mystic Falls since it was founded, so it could be werewolves, right?” 

He looked up at me in general confusion, and my immediate impulse was to want to encourage him, but instead I forced myself into a winning position. “You understand that by asking for my help, you are forfeiting the possibility of you going tonight, right?”

Standing upright as he stepped away from the table in disgust, he growled, “How else am I supposed to figure this out?” Well, he could’ve put the time in on it that I had for one. He just hadn’t had that much time. I didn’t answer, and he eventually said, “All right fine . . . How do you know it’s a vampire? Nobody's ever been found. What do you see in all of this that I don’t?”

Getting up from the bed, I walked over to the wall where the scrap pieces of paper were, found the one I wanted, and lifted it for him to see. “This guy for one. He was in jail. The cameras may have been cut, so nothing was caught on tape, but the door to his cell was ripped off it’s hinges and the locking mechanism was pulled through the wall. There were no indications that explosives were used, and there wasn’t time for it to have been done with a crowbar. That tells me it was something strong. The guy in the cell next to him described what he thought was a draft in the hall just before the sounds of the door exploding outwards, and he heard the man who went missing scream before his screams were cut off. Then he felt a draft again, and the place went dead quiet . . . It wasn’t a draft. Whatever took the guy was moving so fast, he couldn’t see it, which tells me this vampire is old. You can’t see Elijah move. You can see Damon and Stefan move even if it’s just the colors of the clothes they’re wearing.”

I went to walk over to another newspaper article, and Jeremy came up behind me to examine the article I’d highlighted. His eyes narrowed as he scanned it, and then he almost yelled, “None of that is in this!” Looking at another article written on that man, he scanned it too before saying, “Neither one of these say anything about explosives or the guy in the cell next to him!”

The corners of my mouth ticked up, and I turned away from him to point at my journal on the table next to the map. “It’s in my journal.”

“Like anyone but you can read it! How do you know all that?”

Glancing at the second newspaper article that he’d read, I answered, “Well, that article says something about the guy’s family, so I called the jail, said I was in school with his niece, and told them I was writing an article about it for the school newspaper, because I needed extra credit, since I’d missed so much school lately. The woman on reception told me I could do an interview if I brought one of my parents. I told her I would, but the reason I’d been out of school was because I had a long term illness, so I couldn’t go in person, and she told me everything I wanted to know.”

“I thought you didn’t lie!”

His reaction was a little over the top, but I understood why he said it. Sucking the air in through my teeth, I turned to look at him and said, “Yeah, I didn’t know her, was never going to meet her, and I’m better at it over the phone.”

He stormed past me to go throw himself on the foot of his bed and grumbled, “You never had any intention of taking me tonight. You set me up to fail,” after he landed. 

I don’t know about setting him up to fail, but I hadn’t made it easy on him for that reason. “Maybe.” 

Knowing that it wasn’t just a maybe, he rolled his eyes before shaking his head and looking at the wall of research. “That guy went missing like 4 years ago. What were you, like 14? Did Uncle John – “

“No, it was all me.” He’d been complaining more than anything, but what I’d said caught his attention, so I decided to hold it while I had it to try and work this out. “Mom and I were living not too far from here 2 years before that, and – “

“When you were 12?”

I chose not to acknowledge the disbelief in his voice and nodded. “Yeah. 3 people went missing, and it was big news at the time. The guy on the news said something about it bringing back memories for some residents of people who’d gone missing 2 years before that . . . I was already going on hunts with Dad and had been for a while, but I was young, so I suppose I was looking for signs of vampires just about everywhere. Mom worked a lot, and I needed something to fill my time after I was done with the schoolwork she gave me, so I started l looking into it and saw the 3 who went missing when I was 10, the way the guy on the news said, but then I decided to see how far back it went. There were actually 3 men who went missing 4 years earlier too. It’s just that there was a hurricane, and most of the news was on that, so it was harder to find . . . There was nothing before that until you started looking at newspaper clippings from 100 years ago. Anyway, by the time I heard about it, that year’s cycle was already done, so I had two years to look into it, but when it happened 2 years later, Mom and I weren’t anywhere near here, and Dad was busy on his own hunt. There was a phone box around the corner from where Mom and I lived, so I went down and made the call from there.”

Jeremy listened and absorbed it, and I thought we were just about done here, so I went to grab a 20 out of my pocket that he could use to get a pizza, but he said, “And 2 years ago? Where were you then?”

He was still angry, because that came out sounding a little confrontational. “I was a little preoccupied with my Mom being a vampire 2 years ago.”

That should’ve ended it, but he still said, “I thought she turned before that,” and my eyes narrowed into a fairly menacing glare. He was exhausting.

“She did, but it was awhile before I could trust her. I was always preoccupied with what she was doing; making sure she didn’t snap and kill random people, making sure that when she hunted, she wasn’t going after innocent people, helping her clean up crime scenes, moving more than we did when she was human, keeping an eye on both she and Katherine whenever Katherine was around . . . unless I was with Dad and then I was hunting other vampires.” 

Seeming to know by my tone that he’d crossed some kind of a line, Jeremy sat back and glanced at the map. “So, that’s how you know what you’re hunting . . . How do you know where to hunt?”

I muttered, “What I’m hunting is actually a trick question. It’s not just a vampire.” I glanced in his direction, and before he could get back to being angry about me sort of tricking him, I lifted up the black marker I’d given him to use earlier. “Mark out where the first 3 went missing 10 years ago.”

He hesitantly stood from the bed and took the marker before walking over to the news articles from 10 years ago. Taking them off the wall, he brought them over to the table, and started marking an ‘x’ over each of the locations where they disappeared. When he was done, he stood and said, “A triangle?”

Yeah, it was a perfect isosceles triangle. “And the next 3?”

He went back to the articles on the wall, found those, and came back to do the same thing much faster than he had the first time. Another perfect isosceles triangle pointing in a different direction. Without me having to say anything, he went back to the wall and did it again and again until all the locations had been marked. When he was done, I knew he still didn’t see it, so I took the marker back and drew lines to connect the ‘x’s. When I was done, he whispered, “Is that – “

“A nearly complete pentagram? Yeah.”

“Don’t – “

“Witches use them? Yeah.”

“I was going to say devil worshipers.” 

I rolled my eyes and looked at the drawing on the map. “They’re not meant to be something bad. They’re meant to represent the Earth and how the universe is connected – earth, wind, fire, water, and spirit – and they’re used in cleansing rituals or to charge an important spiritual relic . . . but something tells me this witch or coven didn’t quite get the memo on what ‘good’ witch practices are, or maybe they did. They are using a vampire to do their dirty work for them, so they can keep their hands clean. I’m guessing they found a loop hole for killing with their powers. Care to guess where a man went missing last night, while we were driving here?” 

I nodded toward today’s newspaper that was on the foot of my bed, and Jeremy practically jumped across the room to look at it. People going missing weren’t as big in the new department these days, so he had to dig a little before he found it and came back to the table. He pointed towards the one spot that hadn’t been marked, and I marked it before drawing in the lines to complete the pentagram. “It’s done?”

I shook my head. “No.” Pointing to the first place he’d marked, I said, “It has to end where it began for it to be truly complete.”

“That’s where the next person will be taken.” I nodded, and he asked, “When?”

The three men were always taken one night after the next. That’s why I’d had to come when I did, and it’s why I hadn’t really had time to take Jeremy back last night even though I could have waited for Damon to come and get him. The round trip would have been a bad idea even though my first thought had been to do exactly that. “Tonight.” 

“Then that’s where we hunt?” 

Nice try. “Uh, _I_ will be the one hunting, and no.” I pointed to the dead center of the pentagram and said, “That is where I will be.”

“But what about the person that gets taken?”

Valid question. “I don’t know if there’s one vampire or more. I don’t know who is with the vampire. Whoever is behind this has to have a contingency in place to get what they want, because they are on a deadline, so let’s say I stop the first person from getting taken and someone else gets taken instead? I then have to make my way to the secondary location, and I have to be there before the moon reaches it’s apex. Tonight’s a full moon, so the witch or witches need to harness their spell to a celestial event. He’ll be fine until then. They’ll all be fine until then.”

Jeremy looked from me to the map. “Wait, you mean the other two guys are still alive?” 

Letting my hand hover over the pentagram on the map, I said, “I think they’re all alive, and they will be until tonight.”

His head snapped in my direction. “You mean all 29 of them are still alive?”

If I was right, then they were. It wasn’t likely, but I was hopeful. They might have a hard time adjusting back into society – maybe not the guy who’d been in jail, but then that depended on what conditions he’d been kept in all this time. The point was that at least they’d be alive to try and readjust. Maybe. A lot of it depended on how I did my job. “I think that the guys taken 10 years ago would be 30 now. The ones taken 8 years ago – again 30. The ones taken 6 years ago – same thing. They’re all 30, and this is a big spell that lasts for 100 years, takes 10 years to complete, and requires 30 lives to work. I think it all comes together tonight.”

“Eve, you can’t do this alone.”

Oh brother. I wanted to say ‘watch me,’ but thought he might take that as an open invitation to be there so he could watch me. “Jeremy – “

“You have no idea how many of them there are or what you’re walking into when you get there.”

“And that is precisely why you can’t be there.”

“Eve – “

I cut him off by going to my bag. Digging through it, I tried to decide on a weapon. I wasn’t going to knock him out with one of my tranquilizer darts. It is something that Damon would do, and I didn’t like it when it happened to me, but it sure was tempting. It’d worked a treat on Tyler that one time – except that hadn’t been wrong. I wasn’t sure if this was. I’d ask Damon, but I was already pretty sure I knew what he’d say. “You made a deal, and it may not be one that you wanted to make, but you still made it. If you want people to start treating you like an adult, then you need to start acting like one, and part of that means keeping your word when you give it.”

“Like you’re one to talk. You – “

I turned to look at him, holding my pistol crossbow in my hand, and his eyes widened as I said, “So, just so we’re on the same page, it doesn’t matter what you agreed to do or what I say, you’re still going to be a problem for me tonight?”

He’d taken a step back and raised his hands, like ‘don’t shoot,’ and I forced myself to ignore it, because I didn’t like the way it felt. I brushed past him on my way to the door, and he asked, “Where are you going?”

I threw, “To find you a babysitter,” at him over my shoulder before slamming the door open and walking to the room next door. One good thing about this road trip was that I was now certain that Jeremy was Jeremy. I knocked, waited and waited, and went to knock again, but the door was pulled open before I could. _Huh. He’s not what I was expecting._

He was older, maybe 26 or 27, and just over 6 feet tall if I had to guess. His stance was confident, and he was toned, but not built. His hair was light brown, short on the sides, but not too short, and long enough to be spiky on top. It’d be darker if he didn’t spend as much time out in the sun. The 5 o’clock shadow he had was fairly dark. His eyelashes were long, and he had soulful eyes – they were the eyes of someone who’d had a hard life. He’d had a broken nose at some time in the past, but it’d been reset almost perfectly – almost. In short, he was perfect – too rugged to be a model, but if he scrubbed up, he’d have no trouble becoming one. I hadn’t thought it was possible for anyone to be as attractive as Damon, but this guy was in a different way, and my stalker wasn’t supposed to be attractive, so it annoyed me, just not as much the cocky grin he gave me as he leaned his arm against the door jamb and said, “Well, hello there . . . How can I help ya?” 

He even had an attractive drawl to his accent. It wasn’t the kind of twang you’d hear in Virginia, the Carolina's, or Georgia – all places I had lived at one time or another – it was from out west somewhere, but definitely Southern, and that meant he was from out of town. That wasn’t unusual in a motel. I’m guessing most guests were from out of town. It was just unusual for this motel. This place was a dive, and the neighborhood was bad, but it was safely far enough away from the pentagram that I felt it was a good spot. Also, it was unusual that at the ungodly hour we’d arrived here, someone else would arrive literally 5 minutes later and take the room next to us. It was him. It had to be.

Before he really had time to note that I was no longer wearing my sling, or that I was carrying a weapon, I gave a dazzling smile of my own as I lifted the crossbow and said, “Well to start, Revenant, you can stop being creepy.”

I pulled the trigger. He hissed, ‘Ah,” as he doubled over, and Jeremy yelled, “Eve! What are you doing?!” 

Reaching forward to squeeze the guy’s injured shoulder, so I could push him back into his room, I gritted out, “Get in here and close the door behind you, Jeremy,” before my free hand used the arrow sticking out of the guy to make him sit on the bed.

He was good. I’d give him that much. He looked over my shoulder at Jeremy with glassy, pleading eyes as he stuttered out, “I don’t have much, but what I have is in my wallet.” He paused to tilt his head behind him and added, “It’s in the nightstand. Just don’t kill me.”

It was believable. “It’s an act, Jeremy. Don’t – “ Maybe it was a little too believable for Jeremy, because he came up behind me and tried to pull me away, but that was a mistake, and it’s a mistake the guy used as he lunged forward to tackle me to the ground. The moment my back hit the floor, my right elbow went up right into that almost perfect nose, and his head snapped back at the same time my left hand smacked against the side of the arrow in his shoulder, and then I wrapped my legs around him to flip him over onto his back. Pushing the arrow deeper into his shoulder, I used it to pin him to the ground, and he let out a pain-filled cry, but it was dulled – muted for what it should have been. He either had a really high pain threshold, because he was used to this kind of thing, or there was something wrong with him – not that you’d know it if you weren’t used to things like this. “Jeremy, go to our room and get the first aid kit.”

“No. You’re acting crazy right now. He was just defending himself AFTER YOU SHOT HIM. I’m not leaving you alone with him.” 

Right because I was the dangerous one in this room. I sighed in defeat, and I swear the guy on the floor was fighting back a smirk . . . or maybe that was a grimace as my hold on the arrow tightened involuntarily in response to Jeremy arguing with me. Maybe it was a little of both. My eyes narrowed as I watched him. “Sure. Laugh it up. He knows next to nothing about much of anything, and he’s the one who is going to have fix you, which means you’re going to have to talk him through it, and then he’ll know what you really are . . . or you can let him take you to the hospital.”

There’s a reason hunters lived off the grid. There’s a reason they were solitary and drifted from place to place. There’s a reason they had a general aversion to being in hospitals unless absolutely necessary. Their reasons were unique unto them, but they all had them, and this guy was no different. The corners of his mouth drew into a slight frown, and his eyes went to Jeremy, who was standing behind me. He nodded to let him know he’d be all right before his eyes came back to mine, and I could see it. He wouldn’t kill me, but those pretty eyes that held sadness he wanted to hide also hid something much darker underneath. My jaw clenched when I heard Jeremy ask, “Are you sure?” 

Without taking his eyes from mine, the guy nodded. “Yeah, kid . . . go get your first aid kit. I’ll be fine.”

I waited until I heard the door close and then got off the guy. Looking down at him and staying out of arms reach, I said, “I’d offer you a hand up, but you know . . . “

He sat up with a grunt and looked down at the arrow in his shoulder. “Not sure I do know what you mean.”

“Oh come on . . . we both know the reason you don’t want to go to the hospital has nothing to do with you being on the run from the law. We both know you’re not staying in this roach motel out of choice. We both know you’re a hunter. You know exactly what I mean.”

He finally looked up at me. “I could be a felon on the run from the law.”

“But you’re not.” 

He looked away from me and for a moment looked much younger as he said, “Well, I am, but I’m a hunter too.” Looking back up at me with determination he added, “What I’m not, is a babysitter.”

See. Nobody came in here saying that, but he knew what I’d said to Jeremy in the other room anyway, because he’d been fucking listening. He’d either gone old school and listened with a glass against the wall, used vents, or had high tech equipment in here that he’d been hiding before he answered the door. And he may not want to babysit, but I knew there was something he probably did want. I just had to work it into the conversation, so we could come to some kind of an agreement. “Don’t sell yourself short. You could be great at it, and really how hard is it going to be? It’s going to take you a while to tell him how to fix that arm. Then you can regale him with hunter stories, and I’ll give you a 20 to feed him.”

“20?”

Hm. Maybe I could get away with paying the guy off without handing over his demon die. I remembered seeing a nearly empty bottle on the nightstand when I was pushing him away from the door. “You can keep the change, and I’ll throw in a bottle of whiskey after I get back?”

He gave me an unamused smirk as he rolled his eyes and looked at the wall next to him. “Nice try, but no deal.”

Maybe I was going to have to revisit the demon die angle, because I was a cheapskate, and I wasn’t going any higher than that. “Well, that’s too bad. I guess you’re going to have to find another way to make things up to him, because you definitely owe him. If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

My eyebrow ticked up to accentuate my point, and the moment it clicked for him, he looked away from me again. “Who touched it? Did one of his friends find it and - ”

“No, he did.”

That almost got him to look at me, but he looked away again as he said, “Can’t help but notice he’s still standing.”

He didn’t give me the impression that he didn’t believe that Jeremy had died and was now alive, just that he’d seen a lot in his life and that he wasn’t surprised by it – and maybe remorseful. “Yeah, well we all have our secrets, don’t we?” His head turned a little more in my direction, and I said, “Something’s wrong . . . because he’s still alive, right? Like you are handling being shot in the shoulder like a – “

“Freak?” He finally looked at me as he tried another charming smile. It didn’t quite work, because he didn’t mean it at all. 

“Um. I was going to say revenant, but yeah.”

He gave up trying to smile. “I don’t know what’s normal and what isn’t. I’ve never used it. I honestly thought it was a bunch of crap my Dad told me when gave it to me. It’s just some old family hand-me-down. Pretty much the only thing I have left of them that isn’t a weapon. That is why I kept it. I never planned on using it. I didn’t even think it worked.” 

Nice act, but I had no idea if any of it was true. He could be downplaying how much he wanted it back, but he had thrown in how it was the only thing he had left of his family, so that seemed to indicate he did want it back. I also wasn’t sure about leaving Jeremy with him if he was going to kill him, and he might if he thought it’d fix whatever was wrong with him. “What’s wrong with you anyway?”

He exhaled a laugh. “Where do I start?”

“I’m not a shrink. Start with the symptoms you’ve got now that you're alive again.”

He relaxed as he looked back up at me. “Well, for one, my reflexes have gone to shit.” Fair enough. If he was altogether with it, then I shouldn’t have been able to do what I’d done to him as easily as I had. I mean I had sized him up and taken my shot in record time, like 2 seconds flat, but if he was listening to us in the other room, then he’d known that I was coming, and he should’ve been able to size me up just as quickly. He also should’ve been able to react to seeing the crossbow better than he had . . . but maybe he was faking it the way I’d faked needing the sling . . . on the other hand, I don’t think you could fake how well he was handling being shot. He’d barely even made a noise when I did shoot him, and the only time he’d yelled was when I was pinning him to the ground. I honestly didn’t know what to make of him. “So you knew what I was going to do. You just weren’t fast enough to stop me?”

“My brain’s fine - ish now.”

“So what, you thought you could disarm me with a smile?”

He breathed out another short laugh. “Usually works.” 

To buy him time? Yeah, I bet it did. “You said now. Was your brain fried when you first came back?”

He ducked his head. It was a moment of vulnerability, but was it real? “Couldn’t remember a thing. My name. Who I was. Where I was. What happened . . . the only thing I remembered was the last thing I saw.”

“Stefan?”

A flash of anger crossed his face strongly enough that I could see it even if he was looking down. “If I’d seen him, then it wouldn’t have happened, and your little friend would be dead.”

“He’s not a friend.” The guy looked up at me, like he was going to argue that, and I said, “He’s more of an annoying roommate that I can’t stand more often than not, but you’re not going to kill him either . . . not that you could right now anyway.”

He spat out a venomous, “Maybe not, but you sure as hell could, so why haven’t you,” and I could understand it. Stefan did kill him and nothing had been done about it. I took the rebuke to heart, because there was a big part of me that thought he was right, but it wasn’t because of what Stefan did to him. I still thought death was a hazard of the job, so if you were serious about hunting, then you had to know that dying a violent death was a definite possibility. My head dipped as I focused on the ground to force a breath, and mumbled, “I don’t know . . . I’ve had a lot of opportunities to do it, and I’ve got a lot of reasons to do it, but . . . I don’t know.” I glanced at him and said, “I wouldn’t kill him for killing you. I do know that. For one, death comes with the job, and you knew that . . . And he was sort of forced to do it against his will. If he was in his right mind and had a choice he wouldn’t have done it.”

He went with sarcasm. “What’d, the bloodlust get to him? Couldn’t control it, and – “

“He was compelled.”

The hunter sat forward and did a bad job of hiding his confusion. “He’s a vampire.”

“Yep.”

“And he was compelled?”

Yeah, if you’d never run into an original vampire, then you may not know that they could compel other vampires. “Klaus compelled him.”

His forehead furrowed as he said, “The hybrid . . . that’s something he can do?”

“Yeah, it’s how he killed my Mom. He compelled her to take off her daylight necklace and burn in the sun.” His expression became almost unreadable, and I nodded in the direction of my room. “Don’t pretend like you didn’t hear me say that she was a vampire. I know you were listening . . . and compelling other vampires is something Klaus’s whole family can do . . . and I don’t mean the hybrids. They aren’t his family. They’re his creations. I mean his brothers and sister, who aren’t hybrids.”

“What was your little friend compelled to do?”

 _Stop calling Stefan my little friend._ Rather than getting touchy about it the way he wanted, I ignored it. “Keep me out of trouble and protect me if he must, but without letting me know. He killed you to protect me because he had to do it.”

“Protect you?!”

Uh, yeah. Why was he annoyed? “Well, Imelda made it perfectly clear to me that the hunter she called would see me as a sympathizer.”

“And?”

He seemed genuinely confused by this. Maybe this was the ‘ish’ he’d meant when he said his brain was mostly fine now. “And hunters kill sympathizers?”

He had like an ‘ah ha’ moment and sat back. “Well, she didn’t call me.”

Damn. There’d been more than one hunter, and I’d left Mystic Falls unprotected . . . or not. Maybe that hunter had followed me out of town too. “Awesome. Just when I thought I was finally going to do this hunt alone without you or Jeremy getting involved, now you’re telling me that there’s another hunter that might decide to crash it?”

“That’s not what I said.” Now he just looked amused and was doing nothing to hide it. “What I said was that she didn’t call me.” His mirth fell somewhat as he added, “She called my Dad . . . He was unavailable.”

 _Understood._ “Dead?”

“Well, since you put it so delicately . . . Yeah. He’s gone. Unlike your mother, my Dad got turned on a hunt and chose not to complete the transition.”

Oh. “Well, actually, my Mom went looking for a vampire, so she could turn . . . She wasn’t a hunter. My Dad was, and she didn’t like what I was becoming after I went on hunts with him.”

“And that was her solution?”

He could’ve said that without the laugh. “She became a vampire to protect me and show me that maybe not everything about them was bad.” He laughed again, and I changed the subject. “What was the last thing you remembered?”

His grin fell. “You . . . taking a shot on two of the oldest vampires I’ve ever seen. So, I went looking for you . . . thought maybe I could get some answers if I did. I tried remembering where I was when I saw you . . . tried until I got a bloody nose, and then I remembered the mansion where the party was . . . started piecing things together from there . . . I’ve had a lot of bloody noses since, but I think I’ve mostly got myself figured out.”

He gave me another weak smile, and I honestly had no idea what to say to any of that. It seemed genuine, and if it was, then it meant that he’d been out there struggling in the woods this whole time alone. Maybe some of the things he’d done that I’d thought he was doing to leave me a message, like taking shit and moving it around, weren’t messages at all. Maybe he did it because he was trying to remember his life. I backed away from him and sat on the foot of his bed away from the blood that he’d leaked onto it. A second later, I said, “Not one of the oldest . . . _the_ oldest.” 

That caught his attention. Maybe it was because I was changing the subject to one that didn’t revolve around him having to talk about how messed up things had gotten for him lately, or maybe it was because he didn’t know what I meant. Either way, I indulged him. “They are the original vampires – the ones that all the others have originated from over the years . . . I killed Mikael, the father, that night. He was the one standing outside . . . The guy in the house – that was Klaus.”

“And the army you were killing out there on the lawn that night?”

“His hybrids. There’s only one left unless he’s hidden some others away somewhere.” I guess he must’ve literally seen everything right up until I shot Mikael and Klaus, and then it was lights out for him. I must’ve gotten his attention that night the way I’d intended, and that must be why he hadn’t noticed Stefan. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. If he’d stayed dead, I wouldn’t feel anything about it, but I couldn’t help but feel responsible for the tribulations he’d faced after he returned from the dead. I exhaled a soft sigh before adding. “Anyway, you missed the sister, Rebekah, coming in and snapping Klaus’s neck, so she could punish him and take him away. The rest are all his brothers – Elijah, Kol, and Fin. They’re all 1000 years old and now live in Mystic Falls.”

“And what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, if you killed the father, then they can be killed. You could start there.”

Didn’t really appreciate the sarcasm. “The stake I used burnt up when I killed him.”

“But I bet you know where you can get more.”

I did. I actually had another stake that I made during one of the training sessions I had with Elena where I was showing her how to make stakes, and it was one that Imelda made indestructible in exchange for me killing Mikael. She’d said if I did, then I could have any weapons I wanted, and there’d been more on those cave walls than just the Mikaelson’s origin story. All it’d taken was a bit of extra research to find out where that tree had been and eventually, I’d gotten what I needed. I may not want to kill Klaus, but I knew next to nothing about his siblings. Plus, I wasn’t going to leave the world unprotected if Klaus ever went nuclear. I wouldn’t kill him, but I’m guessing there’s a lot you could do to slow him down using a white oak stake . . . or the white oak bullets I’d made. “It was one of a kind. They burnt down the tree that made it 1000 years ago before they left to go back to the Old World.”

I’m fairly certain that I sold that. I’d had practice. It was the deepest secret I had right now. I hadn’t told anyone, including Damon, about it, and I wasn’t sorry for that in the slightest. It meant that I’d gotten some good practice in on keeping that secret, and now I was holding onto it even tighter than I normally did with one of my secrets. I barely even let myself think about it, because keeping it to myself almost meant keeping it from myself – insomuch as I could. But I did have to give him something to really sell it, because he wasn’t going to believe that I hadn’t looked for something else that I could use, so I added, “The ash from that tree though . . . it does a pretty good job of knocking them flat on their backs.”

“That’s what you used in your ammo that night.” I nodded, and now my secret was safe, because he was fairly certain that’s all I had. “Got any more?”

“Yep, but I’m not giving it to you, Guy with the reflexes of a turtle. It’d just go to waste, and there’s not an unlimited supply.”

He could have taken that badly, because I was mocking what had to be a bad situation for him, but he didn’t. Instead he snorted. There was a brief pause, and then he semi-seriously said, “You can call me Jerry.”

That so wasn’t his name. “Why not Tom?”

He smirked. “James?”

“Justin?”

“Nigel?”

“How about Sloth?”

“Sure if I can call you Chunk.” 

This was a confrontation I’d been building up in my mind for I don’t know how long now. He was sitting there bleeding on the floor for crying out loud. The last thing I should’ve done was laugh, but I did, and it was embarrassing, which annoyed me as I muttered, “Right now, I’m thinking ‘Mouth’ might be more apt.”

Our bonding over _The Goonies_ now complete, he chuckled and then looked down at the arrow in his shoulder. Yeah, I guess he was really starting to look kind of bad. He tried, “Austin,” and I said, “Alex?”

His attention came back to me, and he hesitated as he weighed it out in his mind first. “Sure, why not?” A second later, he looked at the door. “So, how big is this first aid kit of yours?”

“Oh, it’s in the car.” 

His chest heaved in a silent chortle as he looked back over to me. “Of course it is . . . wanted to get to know me to make sure you weren’t making a mistake leaving him with me, right?”

“Am I?”

His shoulders dropped, and he winced before saying, “I’m not gonna hurt him.”

“Kill him?”

“I don’t kill people.”

Where had I heard that one before? “Your Dad clearly did.”

“I’m not saying he did, but if he did, that was him, not me.”

“Yeah, but I’m guessing you learned everything you know from him.”

“Well, are you like your Dad?”

Um. That was hard to answer. “In some ways, but when it comes to hunting, he was absolute when it came to vampires, and he was intense, but I’m the monster he created without realizing it until it was too late . . . I could see it sometimes when he looked at me. I scared him . . . and I wasn’t imagining it, or my Mom wouldn’t have gone vampire for the reasons she did. I mean, maybe what she did was enough. Maybe it pulled me back some from where I was heading. Maybe it did in most ways except for when I’m on a hunt. I don’t think that part of me is ever going to change, and I’m not sure that I want it to change. I may not want it to become who I am, but I love it as much as I hate it, and sometimes I just need to let it out. So, if we’re talking about hunting, then no, I’m not like my Dad . . . I’m a hell of a lot better, because I’m a lot worse.” I wasn’t bragging, and I think that was obvious, so why was I saying that to a virtual stranger? I guess maybe because he was a hunter, and I’d never met one, and I wanted to understand myself and hunting. Maybe there was a small part of me that wanted to feel like I belonged somewhere too, like I needed someone else to get it, because nobody else I knew did. 

I think Alex, or whatever his real name was, knew that, because he didn’t immediately respond with a smart ass reply, and when he did say something, it was, “Is that why you hunt? So you can you let your inner monster out?”

“No.” I knew that for sure. “I get frustrated and feel like killing, and I like to win, but those aren’t the main reasons I hunt. I do it because it’s my responsibility. I’m the first and last line of defense against this supernatural tsunami that nobody else knows is out there . . . I may not get to save very many people, because they’re usually dead when I find them, but I focus on the people who will never be attacked in the future because I stop what would have killed them before it does . . . but I also don’t kill every vampire I see. Maybe it’s because a few of them have become the only family I feel I have left, or maybe it’s because I’ve weighed up whether they’ll do more good than harm in the future without realizing that’s what I’ve done. I don’t know . . . I haven’t got it all worked out just yet.” I didn’t know what he thought about that, and now that I’d said it, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know what he thought, so I quickly changed the subject. “So, do I have your word that you won’t kill Jeremy or harm him in any way?”

There was no hesitation as he said, “Fine,” even though his tone suggested he wasn’t all that happy about it. 

“And you’ll keep him here until I get back.”

“Sure.” He couldn’t have been less enthused.

“And you’re a felon?”

“Do this long enough without making friends in law enforcement, or friends who can compel you out of trouble, and you’ll have a rap sheet too.”

Oh. Good point. Liz was always threatening me with pressing charges for a reason. “And you won’t eat his brains.”

“Not actually a revenant.”

Well, those are the only answers I needed. The bar was low, but he was the most suitable babysitter I could find given the situation. “And you’ll talk him out of wanting to be a hunter?”

“Well, he definitely shouldn’t be anyone’s partner anyway. The first rule of being partners is that you always have your partner’s back no matter what they do that you aren’t expecting.”

Even this guy could see the problem I was presented with here. It had to be a pretty big one if I was going to him in the first place. I don’t think either one of us intended for this to be how we met. It’d really been more of a spur of the moment kind of thing borne out of necessity on my part. “Yeah, he’d just get me killed if he came with me or followed me there tonight.”

Alex paused, thought it through for a second, and then decided to take it a little more seriously. “I’ll talk to him.”

Excellent. I got up from the bed saying, “Then I’ll go get him . . . and thanks.”

I was to the door when he said my name. I looked back at him, and he said, “Do whatever you have to do tonight. Become whatever you have to become . . . be that woman I saw taking on all those hybrids . . . There’ll be no judgement here, and you were right. We don’t get to save people very often, so even if you only manage to save one . . . focus on that if that's what makes this mean something to you, because it doesn't mean much beyond the perks of being a hunter for most of us, and that's probably what gets most of us dead.”


	60. Hunting Solo

There are times when you have to assess what the greatest threats are and do what you can to manage them using the tools you have at your disposal. The problem is that it just might mean that you leave yourself open to other forms of attack. For instance, I didn’t want Jeremy to be hurt or killed again, so what was the greater threat to him? Was it bringing him with me to hunt a witch/vampire team? Was it to leave him alone and have him show up unexpectedly at the worst possible moment? Or was it to leave him with a guy I didn’t know and who I had been fairly certain wanted to do me harm or kill me when he got the chance – and possibly Jeremy too if it’d better his own situation. At least I’d weakened the guy, and I’d spent a few minutes with him to get an idea of what he was like. I could be totally wrong about him, but my instincts said that while he might be dangerous, he wouldn’t do anything to Jeremy tonight. It was the path with the least amount of risk that I’d chosen for Jeremy, and I had my own path to choose as well.

There was at least one witch. There was at least one vampire. I had a bag of herbs that’d protect me from magic. I had a ring that’d bring me back using magic. If I didn’t bring the bag of herbs, it’d leave me vulnerable to attack from the witch, or I could keep the bag and protect myself from magic. That’d leave me vulnerable to dying at the hands of the vampire or just a random knife thrown by the witch, and if I died with the bag, then I wouldn’t be coming back, because the protection bag would prevent my ring from working. I thought the magic was a greater threat. There are things that could be done using magic that are far worse than death, and that is what I needed to protect myself from first and foremost, because I had no other way to counteract that kind of a threat, but I did know how to protect myself from physical attacks and more specifically vampires.

It was a trade-off, but as I stood outside the ramshackle colonial house, I felt more confident in my decision. I’d carried the bag here with me, so I’d seen exactly where I wanted to go. We can’t all know everything about everything, so I didn’t know much about architecture, but I did know that this house was surrounded by some of the nicest homes I’d ever seen, and this one did not belong. I couldn’t imagine that the neighborhood would be all that happy at the state of it, and it’d made me curious, so I hid in the shadows of a building across the street from it and observed the place for a while, because I had some time. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that was bothering me about this place - from the homes around it to the people passing it on the street - until I decided to test a theory out and dropped the protection bag on the ground in front of me. That’s when the house disappeared, and that’s what made me more confident in my decision to bring the bag. 

First of all, I wouldn’t have been able to find the house without it. I’m guessing that there was some kind of invisible barrier there to keep anyone from seeing the house. That’s why nobody cared how it looked or even threw it a passing glance as they walked by it on the sidewalk. Without the protection bag, that space looked like a lovely little park that was in keeping with the neighborhood’s standards. 

Watching the people who just walked into the park, I touched the toe of my boot to the bag, and the decrepit house came back, but there was no sign of them, which emphasized a second important reason for me to have brought the bag. With it, I was fairly certain that I’d actually be able to walk right up to the front door, and without it, I’d walk right through the house, the way the people in the park were doing. This bag was my ticket into that house. It might also be my ticket back out. Something had to have prevented all those men from being able to escape, and if this bag helped me find a way around the magic being used to hide the house, then it should work to help me find a way around it to get out of there when I was done. I guess I’d have to see. There was really only one way to find out.

Crouching down to retrieve the bag, I looked over at the house and calculated the best way to go about this. The house had clearly been here since the city’s founding. Why the inhabitants hadn’t kept up on the place even if nobody could see it, I didn’t know. Maybe they didn’t live here anymore. Maybe they only came back every 100 years to perform their ritual – but someone had to live there, didn’t they? How else could you keep people alive for up to 10 years without food and water? Maybe the victims weren’t alive. No, I refused to believe that. 

Maybe the men were alive, and whoever lived there kept the house this way because they couldn’t change it in order for the spell they were doing tonight to work, and maybe the spell to hide it didn’t protect it from the elements of nature, so sun, wind, and rain had battered it over the centuries until it got like this. It was night where I was standing. It was dark where the house was. The light from the street lamps didn’t seem to reach the house, but the light from the full moon did. That seemed to indicate that nature touched it in ways that man-made changes didn’t, so I felt comfortable with the conclusion I’d reached, and it made me relax. I guess this case wasn’t really like anything I’d ever encountered, so understanding even something as unimportant as that helped me wrap my head around it well enough that I felt I could move forward. 

If the spell that was being done tonight was tied to the house in some way, then maybe taking a match to the house was the way to go. It was the path of least risk to me. The problem with that was that there were humans inside, so I had to get them out first. The only way to do that and answer the questions I had was to get in there. I didn’t think that would be a problem. I doubted that anyone who owned this place thought they had any reason to lock their doors. They certainly wouldn’t be expecting me unless they saw me coming in a vision, but even then, the pin that Elijah had given me, and that I always wore these days, should have prevented that. 

Feeling a little like there was no time like the present, because my vampire and or vampires wouldn’t be out hunting for their latest victim all night, and noting that there were no people around who would see me disappear once I got close enough to the house, I stood and made my way across the street. There were no people watching from the windows of the invisible house or obstacles in my path. It was a straight shot to the front door, but I wasn’t going in the front. If I tried the roof, I’d probably fall right through it, and the windows would be entirely too loud if they even opened, but there was a door at the back that I’d seen when I was scoping this place out earlier. I just had no idea where it led. If it was a kitchen, then those were typically an open room that didn’t leave much room for hiding, and there were usually people in them, but it might not be a kitchen, and regardless of whether it was or not, that’s the way I was going, because my thinking was that if there were booby traps, they wouldn’t be as heavy around a door that was so overgrown that you almost couldn’t see it.

Stopping at the shrubs that dotted the property next door, I waited for some people I heard talking to come around the corner and pass me by before ducking down and using the shadows of the park to hide my approach to the invisible house. I stayed low and kept my back to the house when I got to it, so if anyone was on the ground floor, they wouldn’t see me through the windows. When I got to the back door, I pulled out a Swiss army knife and used the light from the candles inside the house to cut away some of the vines surrounding the door. They almost instantly grew back into place, and I paused. Either time wasn’t right in that house, or these vines had been enchanted in some way to act as protection for the house. I pulled one of several syringes that I’d brought with me out of my pocket, removed the cap, and stuck it into the stem of the vine around the door before pushing the plunger down about half way.

I barely had to wait for the vines to start shrinking away from the entrance as they shrivelled, turned brown, and began to die. I looked down at the syringe. That’d worked even better than I’d hoped it would. It was made from a concentrated concoction of the same herbs in my protection bag – the kind that warded off magic. I also had a special blend of herbs that I’d boiled down and used for my darts. Those herbs were for a slightly different use. 

According to what I’d read, the solution I had in my darts should weaken a witch and temporarily make them unable to perform magic – so, yes, Bonnie Bennet, there were things out there other than murdering with your powers that could bind a witch’s magic . . . just not for the long term. You could say that it acted like vervain or wolfbane but was less painful than either of those were to vampires or werewolves – I guess witches were nature’s servants, so nature wasn’t as intent on doing them the same kind of harm that it did other kinds of monsters that it found abhorrent - and it required finding a lot more than just one kind of herb to get the job done, but just about anyone could use it. The other anti-magic mixture that I had in my syringes was to protect against magic itself, and you had to be 100% human for it to work. I used to think I was a doppleganger, but I was really starting to enjoy the perks of being a human.

With the vines no longer covering the entrance, I stayed low, but leaned into the door to listen for what may be on the other side. I didn’t hear anything. That didn’t mean there was anything there, just that I didn’t hear it if it was. My hand went to my pocket, and I pulled out a little spritze bottle of olive oil. I didn’t have to rush in here all guns blazing to save these people, and I was alone, so it was in my best interest to be at least cautious enough to grease down anything that might squeak with something that didn’t really leave a very strong odor. 

I couldn’t do anything about the hinges, because they were inside the house, but I could do something about the door latch, so I spritzed it a few times before putting the bottle back in my pocket. I waited, but not too long. I had some time, not all night. Getting oil on your hands when you’re in a situation that will require you not to drop any weapons was a bad idea, so I shook my sleeve over my hand and used that to turn the handle. I listened the entire time for the sound of something moving on the other side of the door. It didn’t have to be much of a sound, the exhale of a breath, or the shifting of weight on a floorboard, anything that would let me know that something was there and waiting for me. I heard nothing, but still stayed low. I didn’t want to be on my knees, because that would put me at a disadvantage, but I also didn’t want to be standing, because I didn’t want my head torn off. 

When I was sure that the handle was turned as far as it could go, I gave the door a little shove, but it didn’t budge. Maybe there was something leaning against it. Maybe there was someone leaning against it. Maybe the wood had swollen so much that it just wouldn’t open anymore, or maybe this door hadn’t been used in so long that it’d take a little more to open it. Grasping tightly onto the handle to keep the door from getting away from me, I put my shoulder against the door to put some more force into it, and it eventually popped open. I immediately froze as I waited for some kind of guillotine to fall down from the top of the door frame, or a powder to blow into my face and blind me from the side, or some other kind of defence mechanism put in place to keep people out, but there was nothing. No trip wires. No supernatural security system. The hinges hadn’t even moaned. My forehead furrowed in concentration. Despite the candles dotting the windows around the house, this place seemed dead silent, so I chanced a peek around the door. Damn. A kitchen . . . but at least it was empty.

The door wasn’t open wide enough for me to make it through, so I looked behind the door to see how much noise I might make if I pushed it open a little further. _Huh. You just don’t see leather straps for hinges these days. Those shouldn’t screech as much as rusty hinges._ I quickly made my way inside and closed the door behind me before crouching down next to the nearest cabinet. I was sure that the candles somewhere had to have flickered when I opened the door, but again nothing came for me, and it made me think that whoever was here had gotten complacent enough to think they were safe from outsiders, which made sense. You had to have either read the journal of or known a vampire that’d been daggered in a coffin for several centuries to even see this place, and I was still fairly certain that this place was set up as a magical mouse trap that didn’t let people go easily. To the monsters who were here, intruders weren’t a threat, because the intruders were the ones who were really doomed once they set foot inside. Well, that all changed tonight.

I just had to figure out where this spell was happening and get there without taking any unwanted detours. If you were doing a ritual tied to the moon, then you’d probably want a good line of sight to the moon. I assumed that meant I’d be going up, not down. If there was a basement here, then it’d probably been used to house the victims, but that wasn’t where they’d be tonight. I left the kitchen with a gun in my hand and made my way down a darkly lit hallway, making sure to stay close to the walls as I went, and the further I got, the more apparent it became that this place had a warmer feeling inside it than out. It was like all the attention that should have gone to maintaining it had been put into the décor, but it wasn’t enough to dress up the way this place smelled. 

The hallway opened into a kind of lobby near the front door. To my immediate left was a set of stairs. If I went past them, I’d walk into a rather large doorway into a living room. There were no sounds coming from in there – no signs of movement or life other than the flicker of some candles. There were no shadows that seemed out of place for a living room. It was empty. If I went right . . . well, I didn’t know what that room was. It had no lighting in it whatsoever. Of course I wanted to see what was in there, so I could cover all my bases, but there were 2 things stopping me. One was common sense. If something was hiding in the dark, then it’d eventually come out to confront me, so why give it the advantage by going in there if it could see in the dark when I couldn’t without having to use one of my hands to hold my lighter? The other were the dolls. I really hadn’t anticipated those.

They were all around the lobby, like a battalion of sentinels, some high and some low, but all facing the front door. To get to the dark room, I’d have to walk across the line of sight of some of them, and those things were giving me the creeps, which meant my instincts were telling me they were bad news – not that you had to be a hunter to get that feeling. Their fancy little Victorian clothes didn’t fool me. These things weren’t prim and proper, and the ones in baby diapers weren’t innocent. It was like a Chucky convention had congregated in the lobby, and they were just waiting for me to turn my back, so they could make their move. 

Most had eyes. Some didn’t, because their eyes had been plucked out, and most had mouths, but some had had them sown shut. I wondered what those dolls had done to piss the witches off. I also briefly wondered if they might be my missing men. If they were then maybe that was how the witches had managed to keep them here all this time, but there weren’t 30 of them, or at least there weren’t that I could see. It was probably best to check and make sure, or I might leave them all here without realizing they were something more.

I went up behind the nearest doll to me and half expected the dolls next to it to turn their creepy little heads to watch me as I crouched down behind it, pulled my syringe and jabbed it in the neck. When I was done administering the tiny dose, I took a step back and waited for it to turn into a human. All it did was age and weather, like some unseen life force that’d kept it looking clean and new was being drained out of it, until it was old and cracked and looked as dilapidated as the house. _I think I just killed it._ Looking around at the other dolls, I considered doing it to all of them, but what kind of a hunt would this be if all I did was kill a bunch of dolls? Besides, they let me do it to one of them, but were they really going to stay put and let me do it to all of them?

It may sound ridiculous to be so focused on the dolls, but they were there for a reason, and they were spelled, or I wouldn’t have just killed that one by removing all the magic from it. Maybe they were the security system set up for the only door in and out of here if the back door was thought to be unusable because of the vines. Maybe they were like little cameras set to start transmitting what they saw or heard to the one who’d enchanted them, and they’d go off at the first sign of motion. Maybe if they were activated, they’d all pull out a bunch of tiny knives and start hacking at you until it was death by 1000 tiny little cuts. Hm. Maybe I should take the time to put them all down. I looked through the spindles of the banister on the stairs and saw that a few were sitting on the steps. If these were guards, then my theory on the ritual happening upstairs might be right.

I might as well get rid of the dolls on the stairs, since they were directly in my path. They may not be able to see me with Elijah’s pin and my protection bag, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Reaching through the spindles on the staircase with my syringe, I poked the nearest one to me in the leg, and just like the other one, it started to whither and die when I was done. I didn’t even wait for it to finish decomposing before moving onto the next one and the next until I’d worked my way down to the bottom of the stairs. That should give me enough space to slide behind the ones on the ground floor without being seen, so I could reach the bottom step. Certain that I’d gotten all of the dolls on the stairs, I took my first step up, and made sure I stayed close to the wall, so as to reduce the risk of a squeaky floorboard or just falling right through one. When I got to the first landing, there was another hallway with a few rooms along it. To get to the other set of stairs that went up to a 3rd story, I’d have to go along it. 

That was fine. I’d just make sure there was nothing in the rooms that were open before I went past. The first was a study that I really wanted to go explore. Who knew how many information treasures I’d find in there? Maybe I’d check it out after I killed whoever lived here and before I set the place on fire. 

When I got past the first doorway, I saw the first clue that let me know what was really going on here, but I didn’t realize it until I got to the second clue. The first clue was a picture hung on the wall. It was of a young enough couple. She had blonde hair that was pinned up under a hat, and she was wearing some gown from the 1800s. He had dark brown hair and was standing behind her. I didn’t think much of it until the next picture, because the next picture was of the same woman – totally different time period, more like the 1920s, but it was definitely the same woman, just with a flapper hair cut to fit in with the times. In that one, the guy looked similar, but there was something off about him. I went back to the first picture, and . . . yeah, he looked older there. I moved to the second picture of them in the 1920s, and it was the same guy, but he was younger. He should’ve been older if he was aging normally, and he should look the same if he was a vampire and didn’t age at all. 

I moved further down the hall and came across a hallway cabinet with 2 portraits from long before the first photo. The guy looked much older. He was maybe in his 60s or 70s there. Going past the cabinet, I saw another picture hanging on the wall, and this time, it was from like the 1960s. She looked exactly the same, except her hair was long, like a hippie’s hair would be. He had long hair too, and it had a big streak of gray going through it, which made him seem older than his face looked. He was maybe the same age as he had been in the photo from the 1800s? Maybe that first one wasn’t really taken in the 1800s. Maybe it was just a novelty photo, but something told me it wasn’t. 

The only thing about her that ever changed was her hair. She was my vampire. He did change. I’m guessing he was my witch, but he’d found a way to cheat the aging process. I think Gloria had too. In Chicago, she’d said she used a mixture of herbs and took care of herself to explain her youthful appearance, so maybe he did that too to make it to the 100 year mark, but I’d say he didn’t stop there. How many times around had he been? It was hard to say. 

I saw a portrait of the two of them with him wearing some kind of colonial soldier’s uniform for what I could only assume was the War of 1812. The clothes weren’t right for the Revolutionary War, and it wasn’t a uniform you’d expect from the Civil War. He looked to be in his late 20s or early 30s, but it was hard to tell, since everyone alive back then seemed to look a lot older much younger. All along the wall, there photos and paintings and drawings that showed the two of them time and time again, but at the end of the hall there was a painting that was placed there, like it meant something important to whoever had decorated this house. She was wearing some kind of a nurses uniform and hovering over a sick soldier sprawled out on a cot. 

Upon closer inspection, you could see that it was him, but he was much younger there – like maybe in his late teens or early 20s. I went back to the other one of him in the 1812 picture and studied it for a moment or two. This ritual happened in 2010, 1910, and 1810. What if that picture down there at the end was when they met? It would’ve been around the time of the Revolutionary War, and because I studied my history lessons, unlike Jeremy, I knew that had lasted from 1775 to 1783. By 1812, he should’ve looked much older than he did in the painting from 1812, so in between times, most notably 1810, he must’ve reset his age for the first time . . . what age? Well, I was going to guess 30, since that’s the age all the victims were right now. Then he could’ve used the kinds of herbs that Gloria did to slow down the aging until he got to that 100 year mark and could reset his age back to 30 again. Why would he do that?

That question wasn’t hard to answer. It had blonde hair, green eyes, and was staring me in the face. She hadn’t been kept under a spell or forced into this in any way. She was an equal member of their team. Who knew how long she’d been alive? Less than then Originals, but not far off them in age. She may have been one of the first vampires they created. Maybe they did it after they burnt the white oak tree down and returned to Europe. Then they must’ve dropped her and forgotten she was out there somewhere, and she’d been forced to travel this world alone until she met this guy. My attention turned to him.

He must not have wanted to turn. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to give up his magic abilities. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to become a monster, but he hadn’t wanted to leave her to walk the earth alone after he was gone. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to kill people. He was clearly doing that by trading in 30 lives for his own every 100 years. Would he have killed 60 going on 90 people if he’d simply taken the plunge and gone vampire? There’s a good chance those numbers would be a lot higher - my eyes flitted to her – but I guess it depended on what kind of a vampire she was. Was she more prone to killing? That could be why she was a nurse when they met. Maybe she’d been preying on the weak and dying. Maybe she’d been there to help and didn’t like killing at all. 

Either way she was killing now. She definitely brought the men back for his spell. Maybe she, like most vampires, believed that being a vampire was a curse. Maybe her need to prevent him from becoming a vampire was so great that 30 lives every so often was a sacrifice she was willing to make. She could actually be the ringleader here, and that was important for me to remember.

Did I feel sorry for them? No. Should I? Well, I didn’t. Maybe I could relate to the choices they’d had to make, but they aren’t choices I would’ve made. Should they be allowed to continue doing what they were doing? Absolutely not. What about the lives of the men they’d killed? What about the families of the men they were keeping right now? I know for a fact that at least some of those men had lost family members in the time that they’d been gone, parents and siblings and significant others, who had all been so irrevocably changed by their loved one disappearing that they’d died of heartbreak after years of alcoholism, drugs, or quite literal heart attacks brought on by the stress. What about the children who’d had to grow up in the last 10 years never knowing their fathers? One of the first men taken had a kid when he was 17, so she was 13 now and never really had a chance to know him. All she knew was that he’d disappeared. He could’ve been taken, but maybe she thought he’d just abandoned her, and her mother couldn’t be faulted for having moved on by marrying some other guy. 

Maybe after all this time, the lives most of the these men’d had were gone, but who was I to take away their chance to find out if they could claw it or something better back? If I just turned around and walked out of the house, that’s what I’d be doing. I would be as culpable in the deaths of the men being held captive as the real monsters, so no, I didn’t feel sorry for the vampire and her witch who had fallen in love. I felt sorry for their victims, and I was angry. It didn’t help that the stench of rot and death that permeated the entire house was worse on the second floor and grew substantially stronger the closer I got to the second set of stairs. Maybe that’s why I was spending so much time lingering on the second floor, while I worked out what was going on around here. I wasn’t sure that any of the men were still alive. 

There was still one man who hadn’t been brought back here yet, so I guess that would be ‘the one’ that Alex had said I should hold onto. When he’d said that, I’d thought for sure that it’d be more than that, but now I was mostly thinking that if there was little to no rescuing required, then this had simply become another seek and destroy mission. After letting my mind switch gears into the more lethal mindset of a hunter, I ascended the stairs only to find myself faced with yet another unexpected situation. Alive or dead. Was it so very difficult to ask that it be one or the other and not a form of both? I wasn’t thrilled or happy or hopeful at what I found, so it did little to change my mindset.

Sprawled out in a circle around the entire single room that made up the third floor were the men. The stench was coming from them. A look at the nearest ones to me indicated that they’d been spelled into some kind of sleeping state, so the people who took them didn’t have to worry about them trying to run away, not that they could in the state they were in right now. I had no idea how I was going to get these people downstairs and out of the house when this was all done. Whatever spell had been cast didn’t work like my ring did to regenerate your body and keep it whole until your spirit could return. It hadn’t worked like whatever spell had been done to Esther’s body either. All it’d done was keep them alive with the bare minimum of attention. Right now, I think whatever spell had been cast was the only thing keeping them alive. 

I could only tell the two who were most recent additions apart from the rest, because they looked like normal 30-year olds, but the rest, whether they’d been taken 2 years ago or 10 pretty much looked the same. I guess after 2 or 10 years, your body would look just as degraded with no food or water? They hadn’t been bathed. They hadn’t had their teeth brushed. Sometimes they must’ve woken up, because an examination of their wrists and ankles showed that they’d been shackled. Why else shackle them unless they’d woken up and tried to escape from time to time. The sores they’d gotten from the shackles had been allowed to fester. That’s primarily where the rotting smell of death that surrounded them originated. They’d simply been spelled and stored in such a way that they could be forgotten about until they were needed again. 

How was I supposed to free them of this? If I gave them the antidote to magic in their current state, they’d die just as surely as the dolls downstairs had. Should I wait until they’d been to the hospital and brought back from the brink of death to administer it to them? I couldn’t just give them the Gilbert Ring and wait for the witch and vampire team to kill them. That’d heal their bodies, but when he killed them, he’d do it all at once. Then I really would only save one. I’d kill them all now one by one if I knew that doing it would bring them all back, but the ring only worked if something supernatural killed them, and I wasn’t supernatural. 

Seeing that I was alone up here with the exception of the unconscious bodies everywhere, I holstered my gun, crouched over one of the poor souls and muttered, “You dead witches of Savannah have a lot to answer for . . . Loop hole or not, you should’ve cut him off by now, and you know it . . . even if you can’t see that this is morally wrong, he’s still breaking the rules – going against the natural order by living far beyond his allotted time. You’re a disgrace.”

The eyes of the barely living corpse in front of me popped open at the same time his mouth opened to take in a ragged breath of air. Before I could get annoyed at being startled by yet another thing in this case throwing me off, the man groaned out, “Not us,” and soon there was a cacophony of “Not us, not us, not us, not us,” going around the room as the other men all added their ragged voices to the disgruntled chorus. I’m not going to lie and say that it didn’t give me the chills and make me feel like running back out that door and out of the house, because it did. I just didn’t do it. As big of a believer as I was in listening to your instincts, sometimes you had to wrangle them into submission with reason. 

These men were being used as some kind of a conduit to the other side – alive and dead – just like Jeremy, except their consciousnesses weren’t in charge right now the way Jeremy’s was. That wasn’t a reason to run. It was a valuable tool that I could maybe use. Getting to my feet, I looked around the room and considered saying something else to them. That’d been haunting, and maybe a little loud, but would anyone on the first floor have heard it?

The vampire would, but she wasn’t here right now, and something told me that the witch hadn’t. He was either out with the vampire or hanging out in one of the rooms downstairs that hadn’t been checked, and I’d slid up here without him noticing, which made sense. If it’d been 100 years since the last time he’d done this, and he went back to 30 every time, then his body had to be 130 right now, and he might take care of himself to make it to that age, but I’m guessing that his body still had the hallmarks of a man who was at least 90 or 100 years old. Maybe his hearing had gone. Maybe his eyesight had too. With me hidden from his magic, how else was he going to know I was here? He surely wouldn’t have heard what these men had just said, and if he had, then I’m guessing it’d take him a while to get up all those stairs.

If his power wasn’t coming from the dead witches, then I was going to guess, “Dark magic?”

My head snapped in the direction of the raspy, ‘Yeeeeesss,” I heard come from my left. Not sure why it couldn’t have come from the guy I was looking at when I asked, but thankfully, the rest of them stayed out of it. 

What did I know about dark magic? Most witches didn’t want to have anything to do with that kind of magic. There are just some boundaries that you do not cross if you want to keep from becoming an outright villain, and once you crossed that boundary, it was difficult to go back, because the power rush you felt was too tempting to ignore. Also, traditional magic was gained by the spirits of dead ancestors who all subscribed to the same beliefs – that they served nature. Dark magic went against the balance of nature, so if you practiced it, then you were usually cut off from spirit magic, which meant that if you wanted to continue practicing magic, you were sort of stuck with dark magic until you learned a lesson, but once you were too far gone, you wouldn’t see any point in learning it. That didn’t mean there wasn’t some kind of punishment, just that most practitioners of dark magic didn’t care what that was as long as the benefits to using dark magic outweighed the costs. 

In Bonnie’s case, she got to circumvent all that and continue using ‘good’ magic, because she wanted to do something her ancestors also wanted her to do – namely kill the Original vampires. The rules of this whole magic thing were complex and changed based on what the dead busybodies on the other side wanted to have done. Something told me the dead witches in Savannah were none too happy with the guy who lived in this house, so whatever they’d done to punish him had stuck. He just didn’t care, because the cost didn’t outweigh longevity with the vampire he loved.

After briefly thinking it through, I looked around the room at the bodies lying there and said, “It’s the house. That’s his punishment . . . That’s why it’s falling apart. He’s falling apart . . . Or maybe he’s falling apart because the house is. Every year, it gets older, but it can’t be repaired, so he ages with it. Destroy the house. Destroy him. That’s why he’s hidden it with his magic . . . and every time there’s a natural event, like a hurricane, I’m guessing you guys are hoping it falls down, and he and his beloved get a good scare . . . This spell he does isn’t just about rejuvenating him . . . he’s using the pentagram to recharge the house back to its original state, so it can survive another 100 years . . . Maybe your punishment has even backfired in a way. Maybe instead of the house being destroyed the way you intended, it’s actually the lifeline he needs to make it to that 100 year mark when he can do the spell again.” I paused before looking down at the man by my feet. “Bet that angers you to no end, but the take away is, destroy the house and destroy him, because I’m guessing he’s made it nigh on impossible to do it any other way outside of old age, which he’s found a way around.” 

I ignored the hoarse voices coming from around the room that garbled out their approval of my assessment. “Deesstroooy! Eeeeend! Goooood! Yeeeeessss!”

 _Yeah, I got it, witchy gremlins. No need to desecrate these bodies more than necessary._ Taking a shallow breath as I focused on the nearest man, I murmured, “Almost impossible isn’t the same as impossible, so the question is . . . does it work in reverse as well . . . this linking spell or binding spell . . . if he dies, does that destroy the house?”

Silence. My eyes flitted from body to body around the room, and there wasn’t a peep. Think I had my answer. I couldn’t kill him with these men in here, or their slim chances of living past tonight would dip down to zero, and if I was in here when he died, then my chances might too, but I also couldn’t get them out of here until he was dead . . . until he and his vampire were both dead. There just wasn’t time. A quick look outside showed that the apex was approaching. She should be back soon with the last guy needed to do the spell. “Then I think I know what I have to do, and you guys may not like the way it looks like it’s going to go, but it’s the only way I can kill him and save them, so bear with me, and it will work out in the end.” 

I saw movement out of the corner of my left eye as one of the bodies sat up at the waist. Before my head had even completely turned in its direction, it snarled out, “Hiiiiiiideee,” which sent shivers down my spine and had me flicking a look around this open room to find a place where I could do that, while the body fell back to the floor in a heap. My eyes landed on a darkened corner across the way. There was about a 3-foot gap between that and a cabinet that was pushed up against the wall next to it. That would do. 

Light of foot and fast of pace, I leapt over the bodies on this side of the circle, sprinted across the center, past the alter in the middle, and then hopped over the second row of bodies on the far side of the room before sliding into position in the corner. Pulling my gun with wooden bullets out of the holster, I noted that I could see just about everywhere in this room from where I was except the doorway, so all I could do was get my breathing back under control, while I listened and waited, knowing that if I could see them, they’d have the ability to also see me.

I wasn’t there for more than about 10-minutes before I heard the sound of a voice coming down the hall on the second floor. It was bubbly and joyful, like a wife that’d been out shopping and had just gotten back, happy to be home, but she hadn’t been shopping. She’d been out kidnapping, and the proof of that could be seen when she came into my line of sight carrying a man that had to weigh close to 200 pounds, like it was nothing. After laying him down on the floor to complete the circle, she stood and smoothed down the front of her dress as she turned to look back towards the door. “But none of that matters. Tomorrow is a new day . . . We should go on vacation . . . somewhere nice. How about Venice? We haven’t been there in ages.”

Maybe she wasn’t the ringleader. She looked like a free spirit and sounded like she was trying to cheer him up and seek his approval at the same time, approval he didn’t give. I watched her wilt as her shoulders dropped, and she tried, “Or it doesn’t have to be there. It can be anywhere. It’d be good to get away from here for a while. We haven’t been able to in so long.”

Bet she’d spent the last decade or more waiting for him to go back to being young. By the look of him when he stepped into view using a cane, I’d say he hadn’t been able to leave the house in quite some time. He looked shrunken, shrivelled, and feeble compared to the versions of him I’d seen in the pictures downstairs – too proud to let her help him up the stairs or even across the circle of bodies when she held her hand out to him. He threw her a disgusted look as he slapped her hand away, and she stepped back unsure of how to respond before forcing another smile as she tried, “Or we could go on a walkabout around town? You haven’t seen all the changes that have happened lately. There’s a lovely new – “

“Enough!”

Her face fell as her breath caught in her throat, and she nodded, like she knew she’d gone too far. The pictures downstairs had been deceiving. This was not a happy relationship. Maybe it used to be, but it’d changed over the years, or maybe as he grew older, he resented her until he could become young again, and she put up with his grumpier years for the few decades they’d have when his age was renewed. Right now, the balance of power was not evenly distributed, and it was not tipped in favour of the one you’d think given the difference in their physical appearance. She loved him. I wasn’t so sure that he loved her. He might have done this to himself for her, but after being with her and only her for so long, maybe he more or less only put up with her now, because he didn’t have anyone or anything else. In all honesty, she was probably with him for the same reason, because you couldn’t tell me she was happy, but she accepted his faults and little annoyances better than he did hers. 

She’d be more volatile if he died, because she may not be happy, but that didn’t mean she didn’t love him, and I was more vulnerable to her than I was to him. I’d have more time if I killed her first. It wouldn’t be long, maybe a couple of seconds while he tried his dark powers on me and saw they didn’t work. After that he'd have to adjust and try something else, but every second counted, and those weren’t seconds I’d have if she came after me, so yeah, she should die first . . . Tactically, it was the smart choice, and a year ago, I would’ve done it without batting an eye, but the problem was that she reminded me a little of Caroline with that blonde hair and positive attitude that masked a deep seeded need to be liked, and damn if that didn’t make me want to reconsider killing her at all, which was complete and utter bullshit. I’ve never been so disgusted with myself in my life.

I was a _vampire_ hunter first and foremost. I couldn’t go on hunts and just leave the vampires to be the only ones standing when I was done. She’d come after me for sure. She’d kill all these men after I dropped them off at the hospital. She’d kill Damon and Caroline and Elena and Jeremy and pretty much anyone I talked to in order to exact her revenge. She’d go on a rampage, and nobody in the states of Georgia or Virginia or the city of Venice or wherever the hell she went would be safe. She needed to die. Kill or be killed, right? That’s what I’d told Elena so many times . . . and I should kill this vampire for her part in all the misery laying around the attic floor of this house . . . and I might, just not until I’d had a chance to talk to her and suss out how much of this was down to her and how much of it was him and how much of a problem she was going to be for me if I let her live. Sonofabitch!

I unclenched my frustrated fist and used it to slide out one of two dart guns I had. One was for the witch. The other was for vampires. When you don’t know how many vampires there will be, then it’s best to be prepared, and what better way to be prepared than have a way to put multiple vampires down while you’re busy fighting the one or two in front of you. I still wasn’t putting away my gun with the wooden bullets though. It dangled loosely at my side in my left hand, while I held the dart gun in my right with a firmer grip. 

They hadn’t heard me. She should have, but she wasn’t used to anyone but the two of them being here, and he’d started some kind of chant over a knife in the middle of the circle. She was watching him intently, almost with apprehension, like she didn’t want to do anything to disturb his concentration. Without taking his eyes off the knife, he stuck his hand out in her direction, and she offered him her hand, which he took an pulled towards him. Ah, how better to improve the longevity of something than to use a little bit of an old vampire blood in your spell . . . along with the life force of about 30 males. It was when he sliced the knife across her palm that I lifted my gun from the safety of my shadow, and as he was squeezing her hand to make it pour blood onto the alter, I took my shot. She jumped when it hit her neck, looked in confusion down at him, and then started to slump to the ground. 

As I stepped out from around the cabinet, he paused long enough to look down at her as she fell and dropped her hand like a piece of litter. The air in the room began to circulate and the temperature instantly dropped to almost freezing. The draft of air swelled into a gust, and as he turned towards me, his hands shot out to push a microburst in my direction. I ducked, because I’d thought he might throw the knife, not the air, and you could add one more to the growing list of things that had surprised me on this hunt. 

If things had gone the way he’d wanted, I would’ve been blown right out the window, but that didn’t happen, and it should have – even with my protection bag it should’ve happened, because as I told everyone when I made them, they wouldn’t protect you from the laws of physics, so a magical bullet would still kill you simply because it was a bullet, and a magical wind should have thrown me out of this house, but it hadn’t. That didn’t mean it was easy for me to stand against the wind, and it didn’t mean that I didn’t have to fight for every step closer to him that I got as that wind persisted, or that I wasn’t being blinded by all the dust flying in my eyes, but I guess those witches on the other side were pretty pissed off, so they must be doing something to keep me in here. 

Make that two more to the growing list, because when he got a good look at me, a look of terror flashed across his face as he cried, “You!” and I don’t know what the hell that was supposed to mean. In fact, there was very little about what had happened tonight that I could have anticipated given my lack of experience when it came to this kind of a hunt, but one thing I prided myself on was my ability to adapt quite quickly to the unexpected, so despite fighting against an unnatural win and the dark now that the candles had been blown out, I lifted my gun with wooden bullets and used the light of the moon to shoot him in the leg, which dropped him to one knee, but the wind didn’t stop. The house groaned in response. 

That could be from the veritable tornado that it felt like this house was becoming, or it could confirm what the dead witches hadn’t said. If he went, then this house would go too. I also noted that there was no actual damage being done to the house despite the wind, so he was directing it all at me and my surroundings. I noted that about half a second before the dresser I’d used to hide behind came flying into me and cracked me in the head.

I landed on the ground with a thud that was drowned out by the gale. In all the chaos and the dust and the blood streaming down my face and into my eyes, I lost my perception of what was up and what was down until I felt the gun in my hand and noted that it was touching a wooden floor. I held onto that piece of knowledge until I could get my bearings, and pointed my gun at the nearest window, pulled the trigger, and heard the glass shatter a second before I heard him cry out somewhere in front of me. That’d definitely hurt him more than being shot in the leg had. I aimed at another window across the room and shot that window out too, so I could buy enough time to reach into my pocket and pull out another syringe. This is what the dead witches wouldn’t like, but if I was going to do this right, then I had to undo their punishment. I had to untether him from this house, so I could kill him without killing the victims. I’d just had to pick my moment. I didn’t want him getting free and running away.

I jammed the syringe in between the floorboards and pushed the plunger down before rolling onto my hands and knees, so I could crawl to the wall near the window I’d shot out. On the way there, I grabbed another syringe. That one went in between the slats in the wooden walls, and it was then that I heard him laughing somewhere near the middle of the room . . . it was loud and manic, and you could barely hear it over the wind, but it was there. I felt the wind pick up into a crescendo as he regained strength he must’ve lost to the house over the years. My ears finally popped at the change in pressure, and back to the wall, I curled myself up into a little ball under the window, while I covered my head. It didn’t take long, a minute, or less, and the chains of the curse that’d kept him bound for who knew how long were finally broken, which he celebrated by quite literally trying to blow the roof off this place. Whatever windows were left were blown out, the roof shook, and the floors trembled.

My eyes opened, and I squinted until I saw two of him standing there in the middle, arms raised, and the moon . . . the moon highlighted that he was having next to no trouble getting hose hands raised now. His posture was taller . . . it might be the concussion or a trick of the light, but I’m fairly certain he was de-aging before my eyes, and he hadn’t completed the spell. Whatever he’d done to be with her, it’d been just as permanent as if he’d turned. I took all of this to mean that the only thing that had made him age really had been this house the whole time. Well screw him if he thought this was the end of me and the beginning of a new life for him – one free of being bound by the limitations of age. 

As the tremors in the house got to a point when I wasn’t sure this place would stand for much longer, I got to my feet, ducked out of the light from the moon and moved into the pitch black of the shadows. I tripped over a shaking floorboard about halfway to where I wanted to be and decided just to crawl the rest of the way. Who knew what else was flying around in this gale force storm, but I didn’t want to get hit with it. I felt something soft in front of me and stayed low as I crawled over the man’s body, so I could make my way into the center of the circle. The witch was looking for me now, his head had snapped in the direction of the window no more than maybe 15 seconds after I’d left it. It’s where he’d obviously last seen me, but I was no longer there, so now his head was turning to and fro in an urgent search to find me. 

The wind started to die down. He could stick around protect his vampire. Something told me, he wouldn’t. She was down for the count, and she was in a house made of wood, but he was so damn close to bringing it down anyway that I doubted very much that she was who he was concerned with right now. The power surge he must’ve gotten had momentarily gone to his head, but he was coming down off that high now, so he’d do one of two things. He’d either flee and leave her behind, or having been a soldier in at least two wars that I’d seen, he’d stay here and fight, so he didn’t have to worry about me hunting him down and putting an end to him once and for all. I was banking on him doing the second. Weapons in hand, I crawled ever closer.

It was maybe 3 seconds later that the candles burst into flames all at once, so he could see, and the instant they did, I jolted up onto my knees and took my shot from so much closer than he was expecting. Of course it helped that I was behind him, which had kind of been the plan the whole time. The dart hit his shoulder, and I was really quite pleased with that. I’d had to get closer if I was seeing two of him, or I would’ve missed. I would’ve crawled all the way there and stabbed him with the dart if it’d make sure he got the full dose of my anti-witch darts, but it hadn’t been necessary.

He turned to face me already looking about 50 years younger, but when he stuck his hand out towards me, nothing happened. He looked down at his hand, like there was something wrong with it, and then at me, but by then, I’d already dropped the dart gun and raised my gun with wooden bullets using both hands to keep it steady. Closing one eye, because I knew it’d help with the double vision, I pulled the trigger. Human or vampire, if you get shot in the heart with a wooden bullet, you’re done, and with his powers bound by the contents of the dart, he wasn’t exactly immortal in that moment.

He hit the ground, and I crawled over to him before placing my hand on the handle of my machete. Probably best if I made sure he was really done. I just wasn’t sure if I was physically up to decapitating anyone. I mean, I’m sure I could get it done, but it’d be kind of messy if I had to do it with two hands, one on the handle and the other on the blade, so I could push it through his neck. I just didn’t think swinging it was really all that possible, and with the double vision I’d probably miss a few times and . . . ugh. Looking around at the bodies surrounding me, I asked, “Is he dead?” I got nothing. Bunch of ingrates. “Will he come back?”

I waited about 10 seconds and started to pull the machete out of its sheath muttering, “Not really feeling the best . . . This might get a little messy, so you all might want to look away if I have to do this.” 

I paused when I heard a rattly, “Noooooooo,” from somewhere around me.

“No, you don’t want to look away, or no he isn’t coming back.”

There was a slightly more emphatic, “Deeeaaaad,” and I exhaled a genuine sigh of relief before looking over at the fallen vampire. 

How the hell was I supposed to get her out of here? I wasn’t even sure I could get me out of here let alone her or the rest of the men up here. I really should kill her and be done with it. I struggled to get to my feet and realized that it’d maybe been easier to walk when the wind had been blowing, because at least then I’d had something to keep me upright and an excuse for weaving all over the place. Making my way to the dart gun I’d dropped when I’d been hit by the cabinet, I stared at it and then forced myself to kneel down and pick it up before standing and going back to the vampire. I shot her two more times before grabbing her hand and dragging her toward the stairs. I had no idea how I was going to get down those. They’d been ancient before the witch’s theatrics, and now they were a death trap, or they looked that way from where I was standing. Guess there was only one way to find out.

I slowly made my way down by sticking close to the sides of the stairs and using the railing the entire way down. I drug the vampire behind me to the study, dropped her hand, and then went in to see what I could find, but my eyes were a little too blurry for me to see if anything was good, and no amount of blinking or shaking my head seemed to help. I picked up about 3 handwritten books that looked like journals and then proceeded to make my way outside with my vampire in tow. I don’t think I could put into words how annoyed I was to walk out and see my pain in the ass of a cousin standing across the street from me. That’s where my mind was when Jeremy came running up to me. 

He stopped abruptly a few feet away when I stepped into the street light, and I couldn’t give a shit about how I must’ve looked. His face fell, and he quickly looked back over his shoulder, like he was seeking advice from his babysitter, who was leaning causally back against the white picket fence around that person’s yard. I muttered, “Still think hunting is glamorous,” as I ambled past him, and shifted a menacing look at the hunter. I’d had the name we’d decided to call him knocked out of my head, but I knew for sure that he was a hunter, so I was as clear as a slurry concussion could make me as I said, “Hands off the vampire . . . I have some questions for her.” 

“And then you’ll . . . “

Kill her? “Who knows what I’m going to do? That’s why I need to question her . . . I’m a hunter, but I’m discern-ing . . . And don’t look at me like that. This is my hunt, and the two of you decided to crash it, so whatever happens on it is my call . . . What are you two even doing here?”

He looked over my shoulder at Jeremy and seemed almost impressed as he said, “He got away from me . . . I caught up with him here. We didn’t see anything, but he was sure you were here. Wasn’t wrong.”

Guess everyone could see the house now. It shouldn’t be spelled by anything anymore. Wonder what the neighbors would think of that. “He doesn’t carry his protection bag anymore, so he wouldn’t have seen it . . . And you knew where here is because?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “He showed me your research . . . pretty impressive.”

“Not really for someone with a lot of time on her hands.”

“You got any more?”

Cases? I answered, “Yeah,” because of course I did, and he snorted before tilting his head towards my cousin. “I told him how things can sometimes go wrong on hunts, so I think he brought your first aid kit . . . Let me have a look at your head, and – “ He paused to look over at the house before saying, “There anyone else who might need it?”

“They’re gonna need a whole lot more than a first aid kid. They need a hos-pit-al. Can’t remove the spell until they’re stable. Means I’ll have to come back to do that.”

He nodded, like he felt kind of good about that. “Remove it how?”

“Anti-magic serum.”

He had no idea what I meant, but he nodded, like ‘okay,’ before asking, “How many?”

“30.”

He snorted again. “Doubt they’ll have that many ambulances, but I’ll make the call . . . after we fix you up and get out of here.”

“Can’t explain a house appearing out of thin air.”

He turned away from me saying, “I’ll think of something.”

“Your brain’s fried. How are you gonna think of anything?”

“Hey, I’m mostly fine now. Probably come up with something better than you could right now.”

Doubtful. “Tell ‘em a film crew was setting up for a scene that was supposed to be shot tonight . . . didn’t have permits . . . so that’s why the city doesn’t know about it . . . put a halt to it . . . and in the meantime some of Jeremy’s devil worshippers must’ve seen it as a prime spot . . . killed one of their own . . . they fled and left the bodies behind.”

I’d been following him with my life-sized vampire doll dragging along the ground, while I talked, but he’d stopped to look at me by the time I was done. “Used that one before?”

Me? I shook my head in confusion. “No.”

“Not bad.“

 _See. Can’t top that one, can you, hunter guy?_ He laughed, and my eyes narrowed. “Did I say that out loud?”

“Yep.” He turned to keep walking, and I asked, “Where are you going?”

“Found your car over here.” Oh. Yeah, I guess it made sense that they would’ve stayed in the area when they saw that here even if they couldn’t see the house. I wonder what the house must’ve looked like when they did see it . . . like it had to have appeared from out of nowhere and looked and sounded like it was going to break apart. I was a little less annoyed when I realized that hunter guy must’ve kept Jeremy from running in there. When I saw my car, I relaxed until he said, “You got the keys?”

Of course I had the keys. “I’m driving.”

“We’ll talk about it.”

“It’s not up for debate.”


	61. Trust Goes Both Ways

“Well where do you think he _might_ be then?”

I knew when I pushed the button to dial that I was going to regret this call. _”Hmm . . . It’s hard to say.”_

I clenched my eyes closed and struggled not to shout down the phone at her. The blood pressure spike hadn’t been good for my head. The tension in my voice was almost palpable, and I swear I heard her smiling as I said, “Aunt Kat, I know you keep tabs on your admirers - as much to make sure you don’t run into them as to check in on them when you’re feeling bored and go to them when you’re being hunted - You know them better than they know themselves. Where is he?”

I shouldn’t be asking her for anything. We were just about even, and we both knew that after I made a point of telling her that Klaus had said he’d forget all about her when I called, but this was important, and she’s the only lead I had right now. She exhaled a short burst of air in a laugh she didn’t even try to conceal, but eventually said, _“Try Charelston. He has a house there. It’s far enough away to put some distance between he and Mystic Falls, but close enough that he can keep an eye on things there and go back if he thinks he’s needed.”_

“Other than it being fun for you, I really don’t know why everything with you has to be so difficult, but thanks.”

_”Mm . . . Anytime, my dear niece . . . How is Savannah?”_

My eyes narrowed as I forced myself not to look around to see if she was somewhere nearby. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. Finally exhaling a breath I’d been holding, I answered, “Fine, but I’m guessing you already know that . . . Until next time, Kat.”

_”I look forward to it, Eve.”_

After that Alex guy had talked Jeremy through tending to my head wound, I’d remembered about the crop of most recent victims left in the house. Those three could probably be given the anti-magic serum. Hopefully, it’d wake them up, and whatever spell had been done to them wouldn’t leave a lasting mark. I guess being kidnapped by a vampire would do that, but I was thinking more along the lines of them being dead, like maybe the spell was the only thing keeping them from dying for whatever reason. If it wasn’t, and they woke up, then the others should wake up too once their bodies were more stable. Though there was still the problem of them having to explain where they’d all been for whatever length of time they’d been gone. 

Nobody was going to believe that a vampire and witch had taken them. It’s like I told Jeremy. The community at large didn’t want to believe in the things that go bump in the night, so, while the discovery of all these men would be big news, the culprits would either go unmentioned in the press, or it’d be painted as some kind of shared trauma experience. Professionals would be assigned to their cases, and they’d be talked out of believing what they’d seen – if they even admitted that they’d seen those things at all. Self-preservation was another reason I’d told Jeremy that these things often when unnoticed. The victims may know how crazy their stories sounded and choose not to say anything to anyone about it, or they may not believe what they’d seen themselves.

At any rate, the answers to the questions about what would happen to those men now couldn’t be answered until they were given the anti-magic serum, so I’d sent Alex on a mission to go do that, and he’d taken Jeremy with him, because going into a house that was about to fall down wasn’t dangerous or anything, but I didn’t feel like putting much effort into stopping the both of them going. For one, it was clear that Jeremy wanted to go. It’d be more hassle than it was worth to argue with him when he’d just wind up doing what he wanted anyway, and it’s not like the primary threat to him in that house wasn’t dead. For another, I wanted the time to myself away from either one of them, so I could call Damon. 

What Damon had told me in that call had led to me putting in a call to Aunt Kat. Now, that was complete, and I had to wait for Jeremy to come back, so I could find out what the future prospects of the victims might be, drive us to the motel room to get our stuff, and then leave town. He and I had to go to Charleston. Maybe we could stay there for a couple of days, while I healed well enough to do some research, got to know the vampire, and then we could go home. None of that worked out the way I’d planned.

Jeremy and Alex didn’t come back for quite some time. They were probably scavenging, or at least the hunter was, and maybe they’d wanted to wait and see what happened to the men they gave the anti-magic serum to while they were there. Maybe Alex wanted to have a word with the men about what they’d seen and to tell them not to tell anyone. Maybe he’d given them a story to sell that would be believable. Maybe he was going to have one of the three men call the cops, so he wouldn’t have to burn his phone – if he had one. I’m guessing he did. At any rate, he and Jeremy didn’t leave the house until maybe half an hour before dawn, and when they did come back, the general consensus was that I shouldn’t be driving when I saw two roads, so while it took some digging to find the address in Charleston, I had plenty of time to do that on the way there from my spot in the passenger seat. What we were doing in Charleston, I kept to myself, but that wasn’t difficult to do, because outside of giving a few directions here and there, I didn’t feel like talking.

My eyesight had gotten better since we left Savannah, but I still couldn’t shake the headache as I stepped out of the car. Walking up to the front door of the townhouse, I hoped this was the right place, because I really needed a break, and now there was no way I could do what I'd planned on doing, because we couldn't stay here much time at all. I knocked and waited for maybe 30 seconds. A woman answered the door, and I sighed as she asked, “Can I help you?”

If this wasn’t the right house, then I guess I’d have to start over again. “Elijah’s not here, is he?”

I heard a masculine voice from further inside the house say, “Eve?” and the woman opened the door a little wider. 

As she stepped back, I looked around her to see him standing in the background. Well, he was getting better at knowing it was me without even seeing me . . . or maybe I was still wearing my blood. I’d tried to clean it all off in the shower at the motel for the obvious reason of there being an unconscious, but soon to be conscious and unknown vampire travelling with us, but maybe I’d leaked more blood out along the way. If I had, then I guess that at least spoke to the unknown vampire’s willpower, although, I wouldn’t have expected any different. She was old enough to have gotten absolute control over her cravings. “Can I come in?”

“Of course.” I stepped inside and turned to watch the woman close the door behind me before she moved off to do something else in the house. 

Walking into the bright sitting room that overlooked the harbor, I decided to leave my sunglasses on and grumbled, “I hope she’s being paid well and not just compelled to be your servant.”

He gave me a concerned smile. “Yes, well, I have no need to compel her. She takes care of the house when I’m away and is well compensated for her time. She’ll be leaving soon. I only just got in this morning.” He seemed somewhat unnerved that I was here as he asked me to take a seat in a rather comfortable chair. As I slumped into it, he sat across from me on a sofa and asked, “To what do I owe the pleasure, Eve?”

That was a polite way of asking, ‘What the hell are you doing here, and how did you know where I was?’ Let him wonder how I knew he was here. I would’ve eventually found out even if I hadn’t cheated, but I just hadn’t had the time. “I heard what happened.” Damon told me what Esther had done between when I’d ruined her toast and when she’d disappeared from the Mikaelson mansion not long after that. She’d somehow managed to bind all her children even though they hadn’t all had the champagne. I’m guessing she’d expected me to be a problem and had put it in their tea or did something else nefarious that living there allowed her to do before she took off with Fin. In order for her spell to work, they’d all had to be bound, and I vaguely wondered what that had to do with me drinking the champagne or what kind of deals Elena had been making, but in all honesty, I was too tired and worn out to give it much thought right now. 

“I’m not entirely sure – “

“You know exactly what I mean, Elijah.” 

To his credit, he looked genuinely contrite as what I meant dawned on him. “Eve – “

“Not that I blame you.” He paused as he sat further back in his chair, and I added, “It was actually a good plan.”

Looking away from me, his face steeled to hide his disgust, as he murmured, “I think we have very different definitions of good.”

“Well, I mostly meant that it was effectual, but you clearly don’t.” I paused to watch him. He really felt bad about what he did. I’m guessing that’s part of the reason he was here instead of Mystic Falls. He also didn’t want to hear how I didn’t blame him. He wanted to wallow in shame. Nothing I said would matter if I didn’t play into that just a little. If it got me what I wanted, then I was more than happy to indulge him. “And I understand . . . I’m somewhat conflicted about the entire situation myself. On the one hand, you did what you had to do to protect your family, but on the other, Elena is my sister, and you used the threat of killing her to protect them . . . As much as I don’t blame you on a cerebral level, I have to admit I’m a little disappointed.” The more I said, the more a subtle change came over him, as he sank into the sofa and averted his eyes away from me. I should probably stop just shy of going too far, but I still said in mild annoyance, “It feels a little like you would’ve put me in those tunnels right alongside her had I been there . . . or at the very least put me into a similar situation that you did the Salvatores, and I _shook_ your hand, Elijah.” 

That made him look at me, and maybe that’s why I’d said it. He clearly had no idea what I meant, so I said, “You’re the first person’s hand I’ve ever shaken, because I don’t think it’s customary to shake the hands of people that you know well, and if I don’t know you well, then I’m not going to put myself in the vulnerable position of shaking your hand, but I shook yours. I guess I trusted you enough to do it.” He looked away from me, and I sighed, “And I guess I still do, because none of what you did disappoints me as much as the fact that my ally has left me high and dry in that town.” I had his full attention again. “You listened to what I said about your mother when nobody else did, and you handled the situation probably better than I could have if I’d been there, so there’s a big part of me that wants to thank you for what you did, because it needed to be handled. Nobody died. It was a win all around, Elijah.”

“I believe Bonnie’s mother did die.”

I waved that off. “She was turned. After our first conversation with one another, I think we both know where I stand on that. Besides, you can manage Klaus. You can manage Rebekah, and after going on my little trial run last night, I think I’ve come to the realization that dead witches have entirely too much power. With your mother spearheading their cause, it makes the ones buried in Mystic Falls that much more dangerous, because they aren’t going to step up and put any limitations on her power, even if it’s dark magic, and old witches using dark magic are no joke – there’s so much about them that I don’t know, so I don’t have a good way to anticipate what they’re going to do, but you know your mother. I may have a way to strip her of their power for as long as it takes to kill her and another way to remove her spells, but – “

He quickly sat forward. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but you have what?” 

“Anti-witch darts and an anti-magic serum.”

“Do they work?”

Pointing to the stitches on the side of my forehead, I answered, “Well, it was still a bumpy ride, but I wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t.”

“Then the binding spell – “

I wouldn’t chance it. “The anti-magic serum could probably undo the spell, but it’s so potent, I’m not entirely sure that it wouldn’t undo any and all spells attached to you, which would include – “

He sat back again and finished my sentence for me. “The one that turned us.” 

I nodded, "Yeah . . . that'd be pretty ironic, considering all it'd probably take is a drop of that to do what your mother was planning to do last night using her magic along with the power of the entire line of Bennets and the full moon . . . I don't think it'd work on any other vampires, just you 5, because a spell was used on you, and you in turn created other vampires through a reenactment of the spell that turned you, but it wasn't a spell . . . it was a physical act using your blood, like . . . an infection that transforms their DNA, but I don't think there's anything magical about it. I don't know if it'd kill you. It seemed to kill some dolls I used it on last night. It might just make you human, but you were dead the last time you were a human, so . . . "

"Your new weapons not only work on witches, you think they might also kill us."

Oh. Probably shouldn't have said anything. Might as well have told him I had a white oak stake while I was at it. "Well, would you have rather I let you use it without saying anything?"

Watching me he went slightly less predator as he said, "You have no intention of using it on us."

"If I did, would I be talking to you about it now? These are strictly in the witch arsenal I'm developing, not the vampire arsenal I already have."

"Yes, I heard about your stunt with the white oak ash."

I wanted to ask, 'Which one,' but refrained. "Vampires are too easy . . . even you guys. I'm branching out and diversifying . . . Is there anything wrong with that?"

"There might be when you accidentally stumble across something that could annihilate my entire family."

Fair point. "But I stumbled across it in an effort to protect you guys."

"You mean Klaus."

I huffed out a sigh in frustration. I may have even crossed my arms over my chest in something of a defiant teenager pose, I think you could call a pout. He wasn't supposed to point out all the flaws in what I said. He was supposed to guide me and come back to Mystic Falls if he was up to it. "Well, you're all linked now, so really it's a moot point."

He attempted not to smile as he said, "For now, but we won't be linked forever."

"What do you want me to say? That I won't kill you? I didn't do it when I had the chance before you were all linked, did I?"

"What I want you to say is that you realize that Niklaus can never know about this theory you have on what this 'anti-magic' serum of yours might do."

Oh. I relaxed as my arms unfolded. "You trust me?"

"You'll be the first person I call if I ever have need of protection from a witch."

I don't know how serious he was being, but I thought that was quite nice of him to say. "You mean like your mother?"

His lighter affect dimmed as he said, "I take it that’s where you went . . . to test out your new weapons on a witch to see if they’d work?”

“Yes and no . . . I knew I was hunting a witch, but the timing really couldn’t have been better. I needed a vacation.” If he wasn’t going to come back to Mystic Falls right now, and I suspected that he might not despite our conversation, then I might as well get his help while I was here. “Anyway, if you’re on vacation too, then there is something else I need to know before I go back.”

His eyebrow ticked up in surprise. “Yes of course.”

“What can you tell me about a vampire name Alice? Blonde hair, green eyes . . . I’m guesstimating that she’s about 900 years old or maybe pushing 950. Her accent’s pretty nondescript now, but I’m guessing she was Germanic at one point in time.”

He was quiet, while he examined his past. There was something there. He was lost in a flashback of some kind, but when he looked at me, he shook his head slightly before saying, “I’m afraid that name doesn’t ring a bell.”

Maybe not. Maybe he’d known so many people in his life that one person wouldn’t stick out, but she had to have been one of the first vampires he or his family turned, so you’d think that’d stick with him. Now, if I was up to it, this is the point when I’d get up from my chair to walk away as I baited my trap . . . I’d go to examine the bookcase or some other part of the room, while I waited, because getting information was a performance piece more than anything, but as it was, I was just too worn out, because I couldn’t sleep on the way here, so instead I just sat there and used my voice to try and thread that trap to the best of my ability. “Well, that’s a shame, because I’m fairly certain she knows all of you . . . She’s out there in the car. Maybe I should go get her, and – “

“Why is she in your car?”

“Oh, it was her husband that I killed last night.” Elijah looked like he thought that was cause for concern, but instead of keeping my cool and playing this game the way I’d wanted to about 10 seconds ago, I felt all the pressure I was feeling boil over as I continued, “She’s not very happy with me, so she hasn’t said much more than her name, and I’d drag more out of her, like why her husband seemed to know me when he saw me last night, but I’m not quite up to it just yet. Before I take her back to Mystic Falls, I at least need to know what kind of trouble I’m bringing with me, which is where I was hoping you’d come in.” 

I exhaled a sigh before turning my head to look at the front door. “And I can’t leave them out there for very long, because I also have my back-from-the-dead felon-stalker out there, who loves the fact that he can drive a classic car without having to steal it for once, so who knows if the only thing I have left of my Dad will even still be out there when I walk out this door, and he also happens to be a hunter, who said he wouldn’t be judgmental no matter how violent I get, and yet there is judgement seeping out of him, because I haven’t killed Alice, so he is just itching for the chance to do it himself, and she’s probably anxious to kill something too, so if we don’t wrap this up pretty quickly, my car is going to be the scene of a bloodbath with my cousin, who is the little stow away that could, stuck in the middle.” 

I paused to take a breath and then forced myself to relax as I looked at Elijah. “But yeah, I’m fairly sure she knows you guys . . . not as the Mikaelson’s . . . I’m guessing that’s not something you all went by almost 1000 years ago, but I was watching her in the side mirror when Jeremy mentioned something about Klaus, and her eyes opened for the first time, like she recognized the name. Now that could be because she’s heard the stories, like everyone else has, but then she sat up when Rebekah and Kol were mentioned. By the time you were brought up, she’d gotten control of showing what she thought, so maybe you don’t know her, or maybe you do . . . but I’m fairly certain the reason she hasn’t attacked anyone in that car yet is because she’s decided to use us as her ‘in’ when we get to Mystic Falls, so she can exact some kind of revenge on whoever turned her, and it had to have been one of you.” 

My head tilted down as I added, “Well, that and when the sun started to rise, she was still unconscious from the vervain, and I may have noticed her start to burn, so I put my Mom’s daylight necklace on her, which really kind of annoyed the hunter guy, but based on the look on her face when she did wake up, I don’t think she’s ever been out during the day, which I find confusing, because her husband was an almost immortal witch, so he could’ve given her something long before now unless he wanted her bound by something the way he was . . . anyway, I have her husband’s journals, and I told her that my necklace meant as much to me as those did to her, so if she ever wanted to see them again, then it wouldn’t be until I got that necklace back, but who knows how long that will work? She could be relieved he’s gone even if she isn’t happy about it, so she could be gone with the only thing I have left of my mother before I get out there too.”

I slumped back in my chair and waited to see what he did with all of that, because I felt a little stuck right now. He didn’t say anything at first. I began drumming my fingers on the arm of the chair, and from behind my sunglasses, my eyebrow ticked up in expectation as I felt the need to add, “My vacation has gone to hell, and now I’m bringing it back with me to add to all the reasons I needed a vacation in the first place.”

He reclined back in his chair, and a second or two later, I swear he was trying to hide his smile at my predicament as he placed a finger over his mouth. My eyes narrowed, and I held my breath in frustration until he finally said, “It was Kol. He’s always had a fascination with witches . . . I think it has something to do with the part of him that was taken when he was turned. Alice was one of the most powerful young witches we’d come across back then, and he was fascinated by her.” With a soft sigh, he said, “But Kol has also always been rebellious. He is in constant need of being entertained – much more so than any of the rest of us - and he acts on it to the detriment of us all. I’m afraid she was another of his passing fancies that he left broken in his wake.”

Oh. Those few sentences told me just about everything important that I needed to know about Kol. He was a live wire not to be trusted. Elijah didn’t have to say it for me to understand that not even he trusted Kol, and I guess if she used to be a witch, then I could understand why she’d been drawn to her husband. Having him by her side must’ve been the closest she’d been to having that kind of power herself since she’d lost her own abilities, which wasn’t unlike the reasons Kol had probably been drawn to her. The difference was that Kol hadn’t loved her, and she’d fallen in love with the witch that would eventually become her husband. That wouldn’t have accounted for her staying with him as he aged and fell out of love with her. I still suspected that she’d allowed herself to be so totally wrapped up in one person that she’d become as much a prisoner of that house as he had, so he became all she had left in the world. 

Now that he was gone, I had no idea how she was going to react. How would I react? Well, for one, I needed to learn something here from her situation. That seemed to be flashing out at me, like a big neon sign, more than anything. I just wasn’t sure what that lesson should be just yet. I did know that there were varying levels of vengeful feelings depending on what it was that was done to you. There was a chance that she may forget all about taking her revenge out on me if I gave her a bigger target, one who had taken even more from her than I had – someone like Kol, who’d taken her life, turned her into a lonely wandering monster for almost a millennium, and removed her ability to perform magic all on a whim. 

Glad that I was still wearing my sunglasses, so Elijah wouldn’t see me scheming, I responded by saying, “I have one of Kol's journals. It’s like a non-magical person’s grimoire . . . I guess I have him to thank for having what I needed to kill her husband.” A look of clarity crossed Elijah’s face, like he’d found something new in this life to marvel, or maybe just that life had a funny way of circling back around in ways you least expected. I felt the need to add, “I don’t think it was one of her spells . . . It seemed to be written in Middle English, so I’m guessing it was a few hundred years after he met her.” 

With interest, Elijah asked, “And where did you find this journal?”

“My Mom’s research on the occult lead her to it . . . He may have the attention span of a gnat, but he managed to hold onto that for quite some time, so I don’t doubt that he has a very personal interest in witchcraft. I’m guessing he’ll want it back.”

“And I take it you have no interest in returning it.”

He smiled, like he already knew the answer, and maybe he did. “Not yet . . . This is a new world I’m entering, Elijah. I need to have that journal memorized from front to back, including the coded messages in the margins between . . . Then he can have it back.”

Looking like he didn’t have any interest in making me give back his brother’s book, he nodded to let me know he thought that was acceptable before saying, “Then it’s probably for the best that he seems to have forgotten about it for now. Much like myself, I believe that Kol has left Mystic Falls . . . As for Alice, she won’t find him there, but she may, however, present as a problem if she is intent on doing him harm.”

“Since all she has to do to hurt him is to hurt one of you?”

“That would be my thinking . . . yes.”

That’s what I’d needed to know. I started to stand saying, “So, until you’re all unlinked, I have to protect Kol the way I would Klaus.”

I paused in my escape to sit on the arm of the chair as he said, “Does that mean you intend to kill her?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Seeming genuinely intrigued, Elijah asked, “And why is that?”

I answered the only way I could. “I don’t know . . . That’s why I need to get her to talk. I need to see if she lines up with any of the theories I have about her in my head. All I can go on right now is that my instincts say she’s not all bad. They do say she’s darker than Rose was even though she presents as a freer spirit, and unlike with Rose, I don’t think her husband was ‘the one.’ I don’t think him dying snuffs out all the light in her life, so she’s not lost in the dark without him, but I’m just not sure how much of the darkness surrounding her is her and how much of that was her husband. Maybe she needed help getting out of a prison of her own making, and she may not think that right now, but if I distract her long enough, she may come to see it on her own and decide not to seek retribution.”

“Distract her with my brother, you mean.”

Getting to my feet, I answered with a nonchalant, “Basically.” Before he could respond to that, I put my hand into my pocket and changed the subject. “I almost forgot.” I’d had to remove this from my weapons bag before I left Alex with Jeremy last night, so he wouldn’t find it. While I was somewhat grateful to Klaus for trusting in my ability to figure this thing out, I needed to know what it was now that Alex had come back into play again. Holding the demon die out in Elijah’s direction, I asked, “Do you have any idea what this is?”

He stared at it, and then his eyes narrowed as he took a step closer. “Where did you get it?”

“It belongs to the hunter in my car. It brought him back. I need to know if he’s going to be a problem now . . . not just as a hunter, but . . . There's something wrong with him. He’s had a really difficult time coming back.”

He went to touch the demon die, and my hand closed around it. “I have a protection bag, and I’m human . . . Will this hurt you?”

He smiled. “I can assure you that I will be quite safe.”

“It won’t take your supernatural powers?”

“Why would you think that it would?

Opening my hand to look at the die, I answered, “I figured that it’d have the power to bring him back from the dead, and Jeremy touching it did that, but I also have a theory that it depends on what you roll. If you roll the right number, then it’ll bring you back if you die. If you roll something else, then maybe you can use it to take the powers of whatever is around you and use it against them . . . Like if you’re fighting a vampire, and you roll a three, then you can sap their speed from them and use it yourself.” 

His grin widened. “Now that would be a weapon of the ages, but alas, I’m not aware that any such weapon exists . . . yet.” Okay, so would I be right in thinking that he’d just given me his permission to create something along those lines someday? Even if he wasn't, I was taking it that way. I'd just remove the part where it brought you back from the dead at the expense of other people. With a soft sigh, I handed it to him, and he turned it over in his hand. After a few moments, he gave me his verdict. “I believe this is a necromancer’s talisman.”

He handed it back to me, and I studied it, while saying, “And the runes? Does that mean that . . . what, you roll a certain number, and that’s how many people have to die to bring you back?”

“Yes, I believe that’s correct.”

I looked up at Elijah. “Why would Klaus say he thought this was in safe hands with me?”

He hesitated at that. “Without being privy to the conversation, I couldn’t say.”

Hm. Maybe not. Maybe that was a question only Klaus could answer. Glancing at the die, I responded, “Not all of the sides could bring you back, right? One has to mean you don’t get to come back . . . there has to be some risk involved if it’s a die.”

“Unless human life matters to you, and then the risk of 6 people having to die to return you to the living isn’t something you want to have happen.”

He made a valid point. I muttered, “Then you wouldn’t roll it all.” My eyes narrowed as I looked at the die. “So, I’m guessing that this hunter’s family must’ve killed a necromancer at some point . . . He said he never intended to use it, and yet, he knew it must’ve rolled a one, because he knew only one person had to have touched it to bring him back, so he rolled the die with the intent of using it . . . I doubt he would’ve had time to do that and see what he rolled while Stefan was killing him . . . Maybe once you roll it, that stays in place until you roll it again or what you rolled happens . . . Maybe he rolled it a while ago and didn’t think anything would come of it, because he didn’t believe what his Dad told him about it.”

“Do you trust him enough to take him at his word?”

I made a face and stuffed the die back in my pocket. “Yes and no . . . On that I do. It fits his profile of being cautious to not rely on this or think that it would really work. I’m just not sure if he came back quite right. Necromancy . . . that means he at least came back with the ability to see the future, right? That’s the entire purpose of necromancy. Raising the dead is just a by-product of that.” With a final sigh, I added, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Elijah. I should kill both of them. It’d be an acceptable call on my part to do just that for the sake of self-preservation, and it’d certainly make the drive home a lot less stressful.”

“And yet you are willing to give them both a chance.”

"I suppose I am. Maybe I’m just curious to see how this all plays out.”

Standing, so he could walk me to the door, Elijah said, “You sell yourself short.”

“Yeah, well, when this all blows up in my face, I’m sure I’ll learn a valuable lesson on showing mercy.”

“Or you’ll learn that giving mercy doesn’t always mean that anything negative will happen . . . It’s a lesson, Niklaus, has yet to learn, I’m afraid.”

Mm. I guess we’d see. Sticking my hand into another pocket, I asked, “If you’re really intent on not going back to Mystic Falls, then could I ask you for one more favor? I’m just not sure that I should be taking anymore road trips until most of the problems in that town have been resolved.”

“What did you have in mind?”

I pulled out two syringes and handed them to him saying, “These have the anti-magic serum in them. Once the men that witch was planning on killing are stabilized by their doctors in the hospitals in and around Savannah, do you think you could give this to them and wake them back up? It worked on the other 3 that were most recently taken. They should all be fine. It only takes a drop, so you should have plenty for all of them, and you can't be the one to administer it . . . It only works for humans.”

I think it may have meant something to him to have me trust him with what I was asking. Maybe keeping watch over those men and being the one to bring them back was what he needed to do to right himself after what happened in Mystic Falls last night. He'd caught a glimpse of his dark side, and I'm guessing that's why he'd run as much as anything. Countering that by doing something good might go a long way in reminding him that he wasn't bad even if he did a semi-bad, but highly effectual thing.


	62. Finding Places for Everyone

Elena’d finally called us on the way back to Mystic Falls, which meant she’d finally noticed that Jeremy had gone missing, and it also meant that she was waiting for us when we got there, so as she stormed out of the house to confront Jeremy on the porch steps, I went with Alex to the trunk of my car to make sure he didn’t steal any of my stuff, while he grabbed his duffel bag. I didn’t trust him not to steal from me, but I did sort of trust him with my cousin and my sister as long as he didn’t know her blood could create more hybrids, and even then, I was fairly certain he wouldn’t kill her. After I closed the trunk, I tried to hide any doubts I had about this. I knew I couldn’t have a hunter come live at the boarding house. I just couldn’t, but I also couldn’t let him continue sleeping rough in the woods around the boarding house either, so I may have suggested an option that Jeremy ran with as soon as I’d said it. Alex could stay with him. 

There were a few problems with that, but I didn’t have to deal with convincing Elena. Jeremy could do that. No, the problem I was concerned about the most was Imelda. I didn’t know what she’d do to Alex. She viewed the rings that Jeremy and I had as borderline wrong, but using a necromancer’s talisman to come back? Pretty sure that broke some pretty serious rules. She hadn’t done anything to Jeremy even though he’d died, but Jeremy hadn’t had a choice in coming back. That’d all been Bonnie, and Jeremy wasn’t a hunter. He wouldn’t have known any better. Alex should have, or I was pretty sure she’d see it that way.

When he turned to look at me, as if to say goodbye, I discreetly put my protection bag in his hand and quietly said, “Keep this on you at all times . . . Imelda will know what happened to you if you don’t, and she might look to set things right. Do you understand?”

His initial grin dropped as he took me seriously, and his head turned to look up at the house. “Haven’t met her myself . . . Guessing the things I’ve heard are true?”

“Yeah, but she’s changed. I mean she’s here for crying out loud, and she doesn’t seem to be leaving . . . No matter what she says, you can’t trust her. She is less of a purist than she used to be, but that doesn’t mean you’re safe. She may look to right some wrongs she’s making by going virtuous on someone who used a necromancer's talisman to – “

“Hey, who said it was – “ I silenced him with a look that said don’t deny it, and his shoulders dropped. “All right, so what am I supposed to say to her? That I’ve spent all this time out in the woods?”

I shrugged a shoulder before dryly saying, “Well, it’s not a lie. Dead or alive, you were out in the woods around Mystic Falls this whole time, right?” His boyish grin returned, like he found the slightly morbid humor amusing, which was a nice change. “You could always go home.”

“Haven’t got one. Besides, I think you’re in way over your head. This town is teeming with vampires. You live with two of ‘em . . . You need back up.”

I sighed. “Yeah, well we’ll see how you feel about that after Imelda tells you enough to figure out what she’s planning. I suspect that will put us at odds . . . But when people don’t have a clear path to their goals, then they have a tendency to step on those who get in their way. Make sure she doesn’t step on you. She’s tricky . . . Don’t take that battiness of hers at face value. Some of it’s real. Some of it’s an act, and don’t expect the dead witches in Mystic Falls to protect you. No matter what she or any of the living witches do to try and win this, those dead witches will allow it and help where possible. They are fully on board.” 

He exhaled a laugh, as he turned to leave, and muttered, “Dead witches . . . What have you gotten me into here?”

I felt the need to quickly add, “And if she finds out or already knows you died, she may not kill you if she thinks she can use you, since you’re already dead. Don’t let her talk you into sacrificing yourself for the common good . . . Just because you're not quite right yet doesn't mean that you're anymore dead than Jeremy is, or I am.”

He snorted. “Sure thing Mom.”

My eyes narrowed as I took a step back. “I knew you imprinted on me, Creep.”

“While we’re at it. Mind giving me some pointers on that sister of yours. I know next to nothing about her.”

I looked in the direction he was and saw Elena heading our way, so I quickly moved around the opposite side of the car on my way to the driver’s seat saying, “Uhh . . . Make her feel bad for you. Tell her I hurt you . . . whatever. Use you’re charm. You’ll be fine. Gotta go,” before slamming the door behind me and pulling away before she could get there and yell at me. I was already going to get an earful when I got home because of the guest I was bringing. I just knew it. I’d save Elena’s verbal lashing for tomorrow or the day after or never if at all possible.

We were about three quarters of the way to the boarding house, and my passenger still hadn’t said more than her name on our way to Charleston, not that I’d said much more than that until I was dropping off Jeremy and Alex. I wasn’t entirely sure what she was. Was she a prisoner? Is that why she was still here? I couldn’t exactly let her go, because I didn’t need the stress of wondering where she was and when she’d strike. It’d be better to know where she was and what she was doing, so I didn’t have to think about it, but I didn't like the idea of taking prisoners. That seemed out of my remit.

On the other hand, I hadn't exactly forced her to stay with us. She could’ve left at any time today, and yet she hadn’t. Was that because she felt threatened enough with two hunters to stay where she was, or because she wanted her chance at Kol? Was she just going along for the ride because she didn’t have anywhere else to go? She hadn’t cried yet, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel grief at her husband’s death. From what I could tell, she hadn’t flipped her switch either. If vampires felt more than humans did, then she was probably awash in various emotions from woe to rage, but she wasn’t showing it. That was all probably bubbling away under the surface. Maybe she was waiting to see what she could take that meant as much to me as her husband had to her. I couldn’t let her know that Damon and I were together any more than I could let Klaus know it. Then there was Elena. I guess Alice knew where she lived now, but this was a small town. She’d have figured it out soon enough. 

We were almost home when an airy voice beside me said, “You and your sister don’t live together?” and my eyes flicked in her direction without ever really leaving the road. All those thoughts about how Alice would’ve eventually figured out where my sister lived got thrown out the window as I mentally kicked myself for having dropped Jeremy and Alex off first. The only thing I could do was try to put some distance between Elena and I, but I had to do it in a way that didn’t scream that’s what I was doing.

“We were raised apart . . . We only just met a few months ago.”

“And your cousin?”

Why was she talking now? “Until recently, they thought they were siblings.”

“You’re a hunter?”

“Hm.”

“He wants to be like you.”

I tried to keep the incredulous look off my face, but did a poor job of it, as I said, “He doesn’t know what he wants.”

“You don’t want him to hunt?”

“No.”

“What do his parents think?”

"They're dead."

"And yours?"

Well, it's not like they'd adopted he and Elena and decided he should follow in the family's footsteps. "They're dead too."

“Was it a vampire?”

My forehead knitted together, because I still had no idea where this was going. “Their parents were in a car accident. My Dad died to save her when Klaus used her in a sacrifice. Klaus killed my Mom . . . That’s her necklace you’re wearing.”

She looked down at the necklace and lifted it to have a closer look. “Your mother took this from a vampire as a trophy?”

“No. My Mom wasn’t a hunter. She was a vampire. He compelled her to take it off out in sun.”

I put the car into park, and almost hopped out, so if she was going to attack, it wouldn't be in the car. That might ruin the interior. While I went to the back to get my things, she stayed in the car the way she had at Elena’s. When I was done, I stopped by her door, waited, and then quickly got tired of waiting. I wanted to go to bed. “Well, are you coming, or not?”

“Do Klaus and Kol live here?”

Right. Maybe she’d been talking to steady her nerves? If she was expecting a confrontation with them, then that wouldn’t be happening tonight. “Uh . . . no.” That still didn’t prompt her to make a move, so I added in a coaxing voice, “The two vampires I live with and who are currently in a war with Klaus’s family do,” and her eyes flicked up to me. 

I shrugged a shoulder, because I had been trying to sell that pretty hard, but that was kind of the point. I didn’t care if it was obvious or not. It didn’t change the truth of what I’d said. “I thought you were trying to protect Klaus’s family.”

Well, she hadn't heard that from me. Jeremy hadn’t said anything about that around me, so he must’ve said it while I was in talking to Elijah. Now, I wondered how much he’d actually said in an effort to suck up to his new best friend, Alex. She’d figure everything out if she was living here anyway. It’s what Alex knew that I found troubling. “Uh huh.”

“Then how does that work?”

“We bicker a lot, and we’re constantly undermining one another, but when they see I’m right, then we’ll talk about being on the same team again.”

With an annoyed sigh, she finally got out of the car and looked down at me in pure disgust. “That family doesn’t need anyone’s help in protecting them.”

“Maybe not.”

“Then why would you? They are truly vile.”

Guess I was right about her coming along for the ride, so she could find them. I wonder how long she’d looked to do just that over the years. Maybe she’d found them more than once, but now she no longer had anything to lose in going after them, and she was all in on it, or maybe she just hadn’t been able to find them. They were hard to find unless they wanted you to know where they were, because they’d been on the run from Mikael all this time. 

I still thought that if Esther had her way, she’d get rid of all vampires, not just her children. Why else would Imelda be crossing all kinds of personal lines in the sand to help her, and why else would Esther have insisted on killing her children after she returned them to being mortal. She could’ve stopped after her ritual last night, and the Mikaelson children could’ve carried on with their lives as humans, but from what Damon had told me, she’d been intent on killing her children immediately after she’d removed the spell that made them what they were. Why push to kill them as quickly as possible? She might be on a timeline, but I didn’t think that’s the way the spell that’d preserved her body worked. I think that now that she had her body back, she could have it until it died of old age. 

She wasn’t doing any of this because it was the right thing to do or because she’d really learned any lessons about how what she’d done was wrong by witch standards. She was doing it for purely selfish reasons: revenge or atonement with her peers. Probably both. She was seeking immediate revenge on her family for being forced to watch them commit atrocity upon atrocity without being able to stop them - after a few months with Stefan and Klaus on the road, I understood why that might have pushed her over the edge after 1000 years - or she was doing all of this to make amends to the dead witches on the Other Side by wiping out the vampire race, since it was her fault they existed. 

Was her strategy to start at the top and go from there? Maybe, but I had an inkling that killing the Mikaelson’s might kill more than just them, because why else would my Mom have said that if Klaus died Damon would? She’d focused on Damon, but that’s because she knew he meant the most to me, and she’d been running out of time. That didn’t mean that Katherine or Caroline or Stefan or Tyler wouldn’t also die. 

“I know that . . . but I have my reasons. I think that this goes far beyond them.”

“You’re nothing but a naïve, stupid, little girl.”

Alice wasn’t name calling. Okay, maybe she was, but she hadn’t meant it as an insult. It was like she’d had a different idea of me in her head, and what she was faced with now was nothing more than a bratty teenager. Is this how Klaus felt when I said he didn’t match up to what I’d thought he’d be? She didn’t seem disappointed, so probably not. Curiosity seemed to top my list. “Something tells me that you don’t really believe that. There’s a part of you that’s scared of me, or you would’ve ripped me apart on the way here. There’s a part of you that’s scared of the thought of me protecting them, or you’d rip me apart now, but you’re holding back.”

“If the vampires that you live with are serious about putting an end them, then why don’t they just kill you and be done with you?”

Did she honestly think that it was because there was something about me that made Damon and Stefan scared of me? Without backing away from her glare, I replied, “You’ll have to ask them . . . Hi Stefan, how’s the car?”

Her attention finally went to my left, like she was just realizing we weren’t alone, and I heard Stefan say, “It’ll take a while, but I’ve actually made a start.” There was a distinct edge to his voice, and I knew it wasn’t because of me. “You make a new friend?”

I was tempted to look at the car I knew he'd crawled out from under when we got here, but it probably wasn’t wise to take my eyes off of Alice. “This is Alice . . . Is it all right if she stays here for a while?”

Damon snorted in derision as he stepped next to Stefan. “No.”

Yeah, she wasn’t really helping my case, because she kept looking at me, like I was on the menu. “Uh, it’s kind of deserved . . . and before you do anything, Damon, know that she’s 978 years old, and - “

That irritated her. “How do you know – “

“Well, you wouldn’t tell me anything about you, so I asked Elijah.”

Her eyes widened, “One of the brothers?! Is that why we were in Charleston?!”

Without looking away, I quickly said to the two brothers now at my back, “She also has the ability to control the weather. Kind of like you and fog, Damon, but . . . bigger.” I pointed up at the sky and felt the brothers both look up at the clouds that had begun to swirl. _Thank you Elijah for telling me the rumor you heard about her just before I left._ With that talent of hers, it made sense that her husband would continue having her stay with him even in the decades that she annoyed him most. Those are the decades when he was also at his weakest, and hers was an ability that could be used to keep the worst of the weather away from their house. “Um, why don’t you two fill her in on all your dastardly plans for Klaus? I’m sure she can fill you in on why she’s so pissed off.” 

Keeping a close distance was a good place to be, because that way a vampire’s speed couldn’t really be used against you. Sure, they could move their hands faster than you could, but it was less disorienting than having something that was essentially invisible attack you, which is how it would seem if she came at me they from further away. At least if I was close, I knew exactly where she was, but I also wanted to be closer to Damon and Stefan, so I could try to keep them from doing anything that would make this worse, so I took a step back. I kept my finger on the trigger of my tranq gun, but it didn’t really matter. She was so fast that nobody there could’ve stopped her from doing what she did.

In less than the blink of an eye, I was looking at her, and then I was looking at Damon and Stefan as she grabbed me and put me in something of a choker hold, but not quite. With how fast and strong she was, she could've killed me by simply snapping my neck when I was still facing her, but she hadn't. Instead, she held me to her chest, like a shield she could use to protect her . . . or maybe so she could see what Damon and Stefan did? Possibly not. She was expecting me to be something she wasn’t seeing. Maybe she was pushing me to see what I did? She was testing me or them or all of us for sure, which made her smart, and since she hadn't killed me, it also indicated to me that maybe she was the vampire I'd thought she might be when I chose not to kill her.

I could've squeezed the trigger and shot her in the foot to knock her out and deescalate this situation. Would the vervain work faster than she could snap my neck? Who knew? Would it work faster than it took for me to exhale a laugh at my current predicament? No . . . not faster than that.

Damon was the first one to react, and it wasn’t directed at her. He was really quite angry with me, and I suspect that’s because the first thing he’d done was look to see if I was wearing my ring, so he was relatively confident that no matter what she did, I’d live to see another day. “You bring an unhinged vampire here, and you think this is funny?”

I choked out, “Not particularly . . . She’d probably be doing me a favor if she killed me right now.” It’d certainly speed up my recovery if I let the ring do all the hard work.

Damon’s hands clenched into fists as Stefan quickly said, “She doesn’t mean that.”

“Yeah, I kinda – “

Stefan cut me off. “Eve! You’re not helping.”

“Who? You? Or me? Because – “

“Eve!” Stefan’s eyes darted at Damon, like he wanted me to stop for the benefit of his brother, and even if I had the air in my lungs to do it, I couldn’t argue with that, because Damon would probably do something that wasn’t well thought out and get himself killed. I could come back. He couldn't, and I didn’t want that.

The quieter, more gentle voice I’d heard in the car came floating over my shoulder in their direction. “She isn’t afraid?” 

It broke through whatever Damon was thinking, and he focused on me before briefly smirking a couple of seconds later. “Not even a little.” If I thought I would be okay, he believed it too. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t go after her as soon as he had a chance, but it did mean he trusted me enough to calm down for now. 

Stefan took a step closer as he said, “Did I hear right? You know Klaus and – “ 

She was quick to say, “I don’t want anything to do with them.”

Not one to be swayed, Stefan tried, “They’re linked by a spell, so all we have to do is kill one to kill them all.” I felt her hold loosen, and Stefan added, “That makes them more dangerous right now, so we could use your help.”

“Do you have a way to kill one of them?”

“Not yet, but we will, and soon.”

“And how do you intend to do it with this hunter working for them and living with you.”

Stefan looked down at me as he shook his head. “She doesn’t work for them . . . Eve . . . She does her own thing most of the time, and this time she’s fallen on the other side, but she’s doing it because she believes she’s helping in a roundabout way. She’s not the enemy. They are.” Her hold loosened a little bit more, and Stefan added, “We are so close, and you can be a part of that, but you need to let her go.”

Damon tersely added, “Now,” and a second later she was shoving me into him. Looking up at him, I mostly felt glad to be back even though he was really quite angry as his fingers went to touch the side of my head. “How did this happen?”

I ducked away from his hand. Sometimes he forgot that what wouldn’t hurt him or that what might hurt him momentarily did hurt me and for longer than a second. “A flying cabinet.”

“Did she – “

“No, her husband did.”

His eyes blinked a few times as he quickly settled on the correct conclusion and couldn’t quite process why I’d bring a vampire home if I’d killed her husband. A moment later, he was pulling me behind him as he put himself between me and Alice. Taking a step back, he flicked a look at Stefan, like he expected him to agree with him, as he turned his attention on Alice and said, “Then she’s definitely not staying here.”

Peaking around him to see his face, I asked, “Don’t I get a say?”

He and Stefan both answered, “No,” and I bit my bottom lip, while I tried to think of a solution. 

“But she doesn’t have anywhere else to go . . . She’s been stuck in a house so long that I’m not sure she’s all that different from the Mikaelson’s that were stuck in coffins and woke up to find themselves in a totally different era.”

Damon looked down at me. “How long?”

Damnit all. He meant how long had she been with her husband. I forced out a silent breath as I rushed out, “Since at least the Revolutionary War, but – “

“Eve! What did you do?!”

“I, uh . . . have you seen the news, because – “

He stopped me to point at Alice as he said, “I mean why is she not dead?”

I noticed Stefan put his hand up in Alice’s direction as if to say, ‘he didn’t mean anything by it, just wait until they’re done,’ and Alice looked from him to me. “Actually, I’d like to know that too.” Damon side-stepped to stand in front of me as she took a step forward. I threw an annoyed look at his back and moved around to the other side of him as she said, “In every vision of you that Joseph ever had you killed me first.”

My feet stayed firmly rooted to the spot with that one, so it was probably good that she stayed where she was, which meant that Damon did too. How do you respond to the news that someone had visions of you? “Are you sure it was me?“

“He drew you. He had everything about you down to the finest detail, not that it was difficult for him to do. He dreamed about you every night for almost 18 years, and each time, it was the same thing - you killed me and then you killed him. Different lay outs and set ups, different parts of the house, but you always killed me first, and then at the end of spring this year the visions just stopped . . . I thought you might be dead. He was sure you were alive. He worried more about you after he lost sight of you than he ever did after he woke up from the nightmares . . . If he was being given visions by those spiteful dead hags as a way to torment him because fate can’t be changed, then why am I not dead?”

I gave that guy nightmares for 18 years? I could see now why I might scare her. Talk about a reputation preceding you. “I, um . . . I started wearing a pin that prevented witches from being able to locate me around then. That’s why I went missing . . . And, uh . . . I don’t know.” My shoulders dropped as I said, “I don’t know why I didn’t kill you. I wanted to . . . Everything in me told me to do it, but . . . I really didn’t like the way he treated you.” 

It was apparent that she hadn’t been prepared for me to say that, because she took a step back before I said, “Despite all the photos and portraits of you two that said you were happy, I saw enough of you two together to get an impression that painted a pretty dismal picture . . . And I have no idea why this is the first day in who knows how long, that you are able to walk in the sun when he could’ve easily made you something to do it long before now. The only reason I can think that might be is that if he was trapped by that house as he aged with it, then he wanted you trapped in there with him. And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he did make you a daylight charm of some kind. Maybe he didn’t, because you already had one that you voluntarily gave up to stay in there with him, because he couldn’t go out.” Bingo. It was there and gone so fast you’d miss it if you weren’t looking for it, but her shift in body language told me it was that one. 

“Yeah, well . . . I’m guessing it was his idea disguised as yours. He clearly resented your positive attitude and perpetual youthfulness, so why wouldn’t he have also resented the fact that you had freedom when he didn’t? He wanted to limit you as much as possible . . . not out of love or some dying need to keep you near to him at all times, but because he wanted to punish you for all the sacrifices I’m sure he made you believe he made in order to be with you. And the truth is that his curse wasn’t your fault. They didn’t punish him by tying him to that house because he was with you. They did it because he tried to have it both ways and cheated death by becoming immortal – well almost immortal - and maybe at the time he made that choice, he thought he was doing it for you, but you should’ve seen him.” I paused while the images that I could remember flashed through my mind. “The sheer mania he exhibited when he got all of that power to himself . . . of becoming young again . . . “ My eyes flicked over to Alice as I said, “All of that was his undoing, and none of it was for you . . . He nearly brought a wooden house down with you inside without a second thought as to what that would do to you, and let me tell you from personal experience . . . a wooden house caving in on a vampire isn’t any prettier than it is if it were to happen to a human.” 

I wasn’t a complete idiot. I’d verbally knocked the wind out of her long enough to say enough of what I thought that I’d been able to get by with it up to that point, but I couldn’t take it a step farther and tell her everything I thought. Despite the fact that I could see the tip of the stake Stefan had hidden up his sleeve and knew that Damon would do whatever he could to keep her from killing me, I also knew they wouldn’t be able to stop her if she did try to kill me, I’d wind up dead, and then I’d come back to probably two Salvatore corpses lying on the front lawn. I stopped just shy of telling Alice that I didn’t think that her husband would’ve stuck around for her if he’d killed me or that he would’ve gone off to explore his newfound freedom from the house and her. 

With a deep sigh, I slightly lifted my hand before letting it fall to my thigh as I got back to answering what she’d asked, “But in the moment, all I can say is that you reminded me of someone, and I wanted to see if I was right. I don’t know if it was the right choice, but it’s the one I made, so here we are with you trying to understand what happened to see if it leads to some larger purpose and me not really knowing what to do with you, because you reminded me of someone, and I had a rare bout of sympathy.”

When I was done, I took a deep breath and rested my forehead on the back of Damon’s arm. My head was throbbing, and I felt sick. “Too much?”

“Well, I don’t see any tornadoes, but probably. When don’t you go too far?”

“She can stay?”

I felt him throw his eyes to the heavens as he said, “No.”

There wasn’t much malice in it, just his normal levels of paranoia, and he wasn’t necessarily wrong, but I had nowhere else to put her unless I asked Klaus to let her stay with him for a while, and something told me she wouldn’t like that all that much. Without lifting my head, I went to my other option. “Stefan?”

I smiled when I heard him say, “Yeah, she can stay.” Damon threw him a look, and he added, “We’ll talk about it . . . For now, you really need to get that cut away from me.”

I murmured, “So it _is_ botched. That’s what I get for letting a revenant teach Jeremy how to do stitches. Think you could have a look at it, Damon?” I wasn’t sure that my manual dexterity was up for it, and the double vision was starting to return the more tired I got.

“Wouldn’t have to if I just gave you some - ” 

“With Alice here? No thanks.”

“Whether she is or not, just stay in your room tomorrow, and what did you mean by revenant?” 

Damon turned to look down at me, and I opened my mouth to respond only to close it before giving him a tight lipped smile. Patting him on the chest, I said, “Oh yeah, I needed a last minute babysitter, so I introduced myself to the dead hunter, and he’s now staying at Elena’s, so . . . yeah, I’m gonna go.”

I walked past him, and exhaled a laugh when I heard Stefan exclaim, “Wait. What?!”

 _Maybe some healthy competition might do you some good._ It may not have been my intention when I suggested it, but Alex staying with Elena might come in useful when it came to keeping Stefan out of my hair, because lately, he’d been a pretty formidable opponent at this kill Klaus business, and I’d just given him a second Queen to use in his little game, which really hadn’t been my intention at all when I left to go on my vacation.


	63. Business as Usual

I was doing a pretty successful job of ignoring the persistent glares from Elena. Of course, I was aware that I was getting them, but I filtered them out in favor of focusing on the task at hand. If I wanted to test out of at least a semester or two of history in college and focus on more advanced courses sooner, then AP history was important. Unfortunately, there was only one of these classes being offered by the school, or I would’ve transferred to a different one with less drama. 

Stefan leaned over the front of his desk and showed me his phone over my shoulder. Looks like I was right to have a strict ‘no phones’ policy in class. Since she couldn’t get a hold of me, she’d gone to him. _I’m sorry to ask, but can you please tell Eve that we need to talk?_

I ignored him for the most part, as my attention went back to the lesson, and he whispered, “Well, are you going to respond?” and I rolled my eyes. He was getting cranky. You could hear it in his tone. I reached down into my bag and grabbed a sports bottle before reaching back to put it on his desk. “What’s this?”

“Heparin heavy, so it doesn’t clot.” There was a heavy silence behind me, and I went back to scribbling some notes, while I muttered, “What, you thought I’d come unprepared? You shouldn’t even be here today.”

He looked around the room before leaning closer, “I can’t – “

“Half the kids in here look like they’re drinking coffee or a smoothie. You’ll fit right in.”

“Eve – “

“Mr. Salvatore, do you have something to add?”

Stefan sat back and shook his head at our teacher, who paused an obligatory but short amount of time before carrying on with the lesson. I used my elbow to nudge the bottle back towards Stefan when I was sure we’d been forgotten a few seconds later. He needed to take the edge off his cravings, and this was the best way to do that. I know he had what Damon considered some kind of progress last night. They’d gone out to drink Stefan’s cravings away, and when that hadn’t worked, Damon had pressured him pretty aggressively into going along with a snack, heal, and erase on some random person. It would appear that the idea of putting vervain in the town’s water supply really only worked when the vampires in town weren’t drinking vervain themselves to keep even more powerful vampires from compelling them.

Standing ovation for the ripper who hadn’t killed the woman, I guess, but I wasn’t sure that strong-arming Stefan into feeding from a human was the right way to go. It wasn’t just the blood Stefan craved. It was the whole ‘sinking his fangs into something’s flesh and draining the life out of it’ part too. Before he even got to the live prey stage, I thought he needed to conquer the feelings he got from human blood in a bag or a bottle. Besides, I wasn’t Damon, so I couldn’t stop Stefan from killing someone without getting extremely violent with him, and given our current environment, I didn’t think that was the most prudent way for me to deal with him. 

After what I’m sure was a tense minute of Stefan staring at the bottle while he warred with himself over whether or not he should drink it, he eventually sat forward and asked, “What if I can’t stop?”

I had more, and since he’d successfully managed to infiltrate every single one of my classes when he was compelled by Klaus to keep an eye on me, I was now in a position to keep an eye on him all day. “There’s more where that came from.”

“You sound like a drug pusher, you know that?” 

“What’d I say about not comparing this to a human addiction?”

“It’s more like one than you want to admit.”

Maybe yes, and maybe no. “Well, it’s more complicated than either being a carnivore or vegetarian. I’ll give you that much . . . You could always go through all the frogs in the Biology lab.” There was another heavy pause, and I reached back to take my bottle, but he pulled it away from me before I could. I took that as a good sign. A minute later, he sat forward and asked, “Seriously, what if this isn’t enough? What if whatever you have in your bag isn’t? I could go through this entire classroom of people and still not have enough.”

“Use what’s in that bottle to take the edge off. Remember that there is a limited supply, so you need to take it in hand, and if you feel like you just can’t keep your fangs out of the student population, then know that I’ll have to stop you, which would be a complete nightmare for both of us. You’d be exposing what you are to a town full of amateur hunters. You’d have to leave. Damon would have to leave. Depending on how violent the confrontation becomes, I might have to leave, so I don’t end up in a psych ward or prison, and who would be here to keep Klaus away from Elena?”

"The last I heard, she was living with a pretty powerful witch."

"Sure. A witch that's dead set against the idea of hybrids can be relied upon to keep 'the one way of making more' alive if all else fails."

I smirked at the dramatic sigh, I got in response. A moment later, he grumbled, “If that’s true, then why do you have her living with Elena?"

"First, I don't have Imelda living anywhere. People seem to forget that Imelda said she needed to come here, Elena went to pick her up, and then gave her a place to stay. All I did was tell Elena that she couldn't then kick Imelda out. Second, as long as things are relatively stable around here and taking Elena out of town would be more trouble than it’s worth, then Klaus may not leave, but he wouldn’t take Elena either. Your little war with him kept things stable, because he doesn’t think you’re a threat. You introducing his mother into the equation makes the situation unstable, because he knows she _is_ a threat. He may stand his ground until he’s no longer linked to his siblings. He may stand his ground even longer than that, but if his mother turns up the heat, then he’ll take off the way he used to do when Mikael got too close, and when that happens, he will try to take Elena with him . . . Imelda would still try to protect her, but if anything happens to make Imelda think that she won’t win that battle, there’s at least a 50% chance that she’ll finish the war by killing Elena to keep him from creating his hybrid army.”

Stefan was quiet, while he absorbed what I’d said. A minute later, our teacher went to the board, and Stefan leaned closer as he said, “You couldn’t have laid it all out like that instead of going with the crazy notion that if Klaus dies Damon will?”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference. You’re not trying to protect Elena or Damon.”

“Yeah, well if protecting both of them is what you’re trying to do, then have you ever thought that maybe it’ll come down to him or her?”

He wasn’t wrong. If things got too dangerous with Klaus for Elena, then I might have to kill him, but if doing that meant that I’d lose Damon, then it would 100% be me choosing her over him, and if I didn’t take my chance at Klaus in that crucial moment, so I could keep Damon alive, it meant Klaus would wind up with Elena, so I’d be choosing Damon over her. I honestly had no idea what I would do in that situation. “All the time, which is why I’m trying to prevent it from coming to that . . . Now drink your drink and leave me alone. For some of us, it’s the first time we're taking this class, so we’re trying to learn.”

I got two solid minutes without interruption before he eventually said, “So do you have any ideas on what Rebekah wants?” His voice sounded less strained, so it would seem my bottle of blood was helping to at least take the edge off, and he hadn’t torn into any of our classmates, so I was counting this as a win. 

“Information?”

“Yeah, I figured as much . . . What kind of information?”

“I’d rather stay out of it.” When I'd gotten home, and Damon filled me in on more of the details that happened, while I was in Savannah, the first thing I’d thought was, ‘Well done Elena.’ She’d really used her head when she went to the vampire-proof cave. The second thing I thought was, ‘Gasoline and a match? Interesting solution to your dilemma, Rebekah. I kind of like it. Hopefully you were focused on that and didn’t get too good of a look at the inside of that cave.’ And I have to admit that I also thought, ‘I have no idea what mind games you played to come out on top, Elena, but whatever they were, nicely done,’ because if she hadn’t said whatever it is she’d said, then she’d be dead. I was actually kind of proud of Elena even though I didn’t know the specifics.

Unfortunately, I don’t think she’d had all of Rebekah’s attention, because Rebekah decided to crash Damon and Stefan's bonding session last night and followed them around all night asking questions. If she already knew enough to go to the Salvatore’s, then she knew that their family had the logging records for the town, and it was only a short jump from there to finding out what the tree had been used to build. Good thing I burned that book when I found it, but if she was on the trail, then it was a concern. If nobody knew about the second white oak tree, then what I did or didn't do in the background wouldn't have mattered. Things were different now, and I needed to get ahead of it before it became a problem, but I wasn’t sure how to do that without making the situation 10x worse.

“So you do know.”

Stefan said it like he hadn’t thought I really did until then. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t, but I still say you do.” 

I rolled my eyes before throwing him a bored look over my shoulder. “What do you think she’s after? Can’t be that difficult to figure out.”

“Well, I’m guessing that it isn’t if you’re already privy to more information, which we both know you are.” 

“Sure. I’m all seeing and all knowing. That’s why I knew where you hid that coffin . . . stupid dead witches. Bet you had them hide it for you.”

His eyes narrowed as he tried to contain a smirk. “You really are too smart for your own good.”

“That’s a nonsensical sentiment. I use my brains to keep me alive, which is by and large good for me . . . Besides, I saw how powerful dead witches can be. They kept me from being blown out of a 2-story window by tornado force winds.”

His smirk dropped. “Is that what happened . . . “ His eyes flicked to the side of my head where the cut should be. This was my first day back to school, but I hadn’t been out nearly as long as I should’ve been – just one day, while I waited for the vampire blood to get out of my system. I knew my reliance on it had gotten bad. I hadn’t intended to take it, but how was I going to explain leaving for some kind of experimental procedure to fix my collar bone only to come back with a massive cut on the side of my head and a concussion? I honestly don’t think I would’ve done it if I still lived the way I had for most of my life, because back then, I didn’t have to be anywhere or see anyone, so it wouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t help that Damon had come up with an idea to make it more palatable for me. He’d gotten the idea from something I’d argued. I guess I hadn’t thought he’d do it, or even that he could, and he’d wanted to show me that I was wrong. 

He stole one of my syringes to remove whatever was inside of some soft gel capsules I had and replaced it with his blood, so it wasn’t any different than taking medicine. If I took like 4, it was enough to work, just not instantaneously. It was still bad, because the side effects from this particular ‘medicine’ were that I’d become a vampire if I died. If I was a normal girl my age, the probability of that happening would be lower, but I wasn’t a normal girl my age. I was a hunter, which meant I had to sequester myself to my room for a day, particularly with the new boarder we had living at the house. 

“Let’s just say the dead witches in Savannah didn’t consider me one of the bad guys the way the ones in Mystic Falls do.”

“Miss Gilbert?” My eyes immediately went to Elena, but she was looking up at the teacher, so my eyes followed hers. Guess I wasn’t used to being called Miss Gilbert.

“Yes?”

“Perhaps, you could tell the class what you and Mr. Salvatore are discussing, since it appears to be more important than what I’m teaching.”

Without missing a beat, I responded, “Sure . . . It’s actually kind of exciting. Stefan said I could have his grandfather’s memorabilia from World War II for the history presentation we’re supposed to give.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Uh . . . not yet, but you will, and if you don’t, then I know where you hide it, so I’ll just take it.”

“If I give it to you, then what am I supposed to use?”

I looked at him over my shoulder. “I thought you were doing your report on the Mexican-American War.”

“I thought you were doing yours on the Spanish-American War, because you said everyone does theirs on World War II.”

And now for the hook. “Yeah, but that was before I found out I’d have an edge with a complete uniform from hat to boots, the rain coat, jump suit, ammo pouches, hatchet, not to mention the medals, and – “

“That really does sound like quiet the find Mr. Salvatore. I think it would be a shame if one of you didn’t choose to do a presentation on them.” 

I tried not to smile at the teacher’s response. She was a history junkie, so I figured she’d be intrigued enough to take her attention off of why she’d called us out in the first place. “That’s what I think, so if he won’t, then I feel like I have to do it, but it won't be as good as if he did it, because if he did, then he could wear the uniform, and I think if he did, it’d fit him like a glove. He and his grandfather were the exact same size.”

Stefan grumbled, “You’re as bad as Damon, you know that?” before raising his voice to say, “Fine . . . I’ll do it,” and our teacher beamed in response.

“Excellent. Well, now that that’s settled, is it okay with the two of you if we continue?” Stefan waved his hand in her direction, and she went back to whatever she’d been saying. At this point, I’d lost track. I’d have to catch up through the reading. Apparently, too jumpy to let me learn anything today, Stefan waited all of a minute before saying, “I take it that was pay back for something.”

“Nope. Just didn’t feel like hearing a lecture.”

“But now I have to wear my uniform.”

“No you don’t . . . Saying that was me amusing myself, but now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, I can see why you may not want to wear it if it holds some bad memories for you . . . I would like to hear you talk about it though . . . to get a first-hand account from someone who was actually there.”

“It’s not something I like to talk about.”

“Fair enough.”

There was another pause, and he said, “That’s it? You’ll leave it alone?”

“If you don’t want to talk about it, don’t talk about it. I’m guessing you lost a lot of friends . . . You were at a point in your life when you could still make those.” After a moment of silence, I broke it by asking, “Would boot camp be too much?”

“I don’t know . . . That’s where I met . . . I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” I really should have been paying attention to the lesson, but by that point, I think I’d written it off. Faking like I was paying attention by taking notes that I’d really only process later, I said, “Do any of them have stories that need to be told?”

“All of them do.” I didn’t respond, and a few moments later, he added, “I’m just not in the right head space for it.” 

“The presentations aren’t for another month.”

“It’s gonna take a lot longer than that.”

“Well, on the plus side, you might be dead by then, so this entire conversation might be pointless.”

Trying to keep the humor out of his voice, Stefan responded, “It does feel like it.”

I don’t know what his next thought was, but I’m guessing it was along the lines that I might also be dead given the way I’d somehow managed to put myself smack dab in the middle of their little feud, because he asked, “So are you going to talk to her?”

I knew exactly who he meant. Elena. “I’m thinking not . . . Since I was such a good pal and brought you something to tie you over until you get home, do you think you could buy me like 5 seconds to disappear after class?”

“Why won’t you talk to her?”

Leaning closer to my notes, I answered, “Because I find it entertaining.” That was true. I found it highly amusing. It was like a giant game of tag or hide and seek, but instead of being the one doing the seeking for once, I was the one hiding, and it was fun. I already had my escape route out of here planned, so by the time she got to the door, I’d be gone without a trace. I turned the page on my notebook. “And, in this particular case, I strongly suspect I was in the wrong.”

“For the spectacle you made at the ball?”

I knew I wasn’t wrong for doing that. “For taking Jeremy without telling her.” I’d done it, because I’d tried to respect his wishes and on some level was as curious as he was to find out how long it’d take her to realize he was gone. It’d taken her longer than it should have, but I still probably shouldn’t have done it. She hadn’t known where he was or what might’ve been happening to him while she was in danger down in those tunnels. “And maybe for landing her with the dead guy you killed.”

He snorted, “Maybe?” and a few moments later, his tone shifted as he asked, “Is he – “

“Attractive? Extremely.”

I tried not to laugh at the pause that followed. “I was going to ask if there was anything wrong with him, since you keep calling him a revenant . . . You think he’s attractive?”

“Objectively? Yeah.”

He mocked me. “Does Damon know?”

That I thought Alex was attractive? “Yep . . . He’s itching to meet him too . . . but he also thinks it’ll be entertaining for you to have some competition.”

“He – “ After catching himself from falling for it, Stefan switched it up by saying, “That was your plan all along . . . You think I’ll be distracted by – “

“Happy consequence. I really had nowhere else to put him. He couldn’t keep camping out in the woods around our house.”

“My house.”

“Whatever.”

“Could’ve sent him to a B&B or a motel.”

He made a good point, but, “I think it’d be better if one of us is keeping an eye on him.”

“So he is dangerous.”

Little fast off the mark with that one. “I’m not sure . . . I’m more concerned that he’s not quite up to the challenges of living life in general. It’s been a slow, painful comeback for him. And it isn’t like he won’t want a chance to go after Klaus, which means he’ll eventually join your team even if he doesn’t want to work with you, so what’s the problem?”

“You’re kidding me, right? He’s a complete stranger – “

“So were you once.”

“And look at how well that turned out.”

“Point taken . . . but it is worth mentioning that all of these woes that have befallen Elena would have still happened without you, because if Mikael found her 15 years ago, then it was only a matter of time before Klaus did.” I glanced at my watch and said, “Of course, he may not have found her if those tomb vampires hadn’t gotten out, because word about her had to spread somehow, and my bet is that it was one or more of them that left before my Dad purged the town of all the rest, but then Katherine knew about her too, and she would’ve handed her over along with the moonstone, Caroline, and Mason anyway, so . . . “

The teacher was wrapping it up, so I turned in my seat to look back at him. I might have a way to get out of being in trouble with he and Damon. I had to lead them to their own conclusions on the white oak tree without making it look like I’d known about it for a while. It’d be a dead end when they couldn’t find the logging book, so it shouldn’t do any real harm, and it’d get Stefan out of my hair for the day. I wanted to learn this stuff even if he didn’t. “And by the way, you really shouldn’t be here, so if the reason you are is so you can find out what Rebekah wanted yesterday, then if I had to put together a general thesis for what Damon said she was asking, it’d be ‘The role of the Salvatores in Mystic Falls.’”

“What about our family’s history with the town could she possibly think was important?”

“You tell me . . . What’d your family do?”

“Logging, and – “

“Uh huh, and logging is of what?”

He was genuinely confused by that. “Trees?”

“Yeah, and if we take into account all of the pointy things that can be made from trees, why would an _almost_ immortal vampire want to know more about the family who cut down trees in the area?“

His posture immediately changed as it hit him all at once. “There was another white oak.”

“That would be my guess.”

I glanced at my watch again. 4, 3, 2 – I stood before the bell had even rung, and Stefan wasn’t far behind. We made it to the door at approximately the same time, but I got through first. He went left. I went right, and I’m sure we were both gone by the time Elena got to the door. The difference was that I was going to finish the rest of my classes in peace, and he was going home to look for a book that no longer existed. There was really only one person who might be responsible for doing that, but they couldn’t prove it, and at least I’d bought myself some time to figure out what to do with Rebekah and Klaus.


	64. An Opportunity Presents Itself

_There are eyes on me._ I stood from my final stretch a little early and imagine I must’ve looked like the lone gazelle that was the first to notice a lion approaching the herd. I had to admire her tenacity. She’d been at this all day. My time of reckoning was close . . . just not imminent, because I still found this game of cat and mouse at least a little entertaining. I’d probably let her catch up with me tomorrow, so we could get it over with and move on from it. I used the other cheerleaders as a cover. While they stood around and talked, I grabbed my things and hopped the fence. It’s not like Caroline was here to stop me. She was taking a few days to help Bonnie right now.

After seeing that I was no longer there when she made it onto the field, Elena started scanning the area and saw me right around the time I got to the parking lot. Those early morning training sessions really seemed to be paying off. She was getting pretty fast. There wasn’t much time to spare when I finally made it to my car. I think she saw me laugh when I started the car, because when I saw her in the rear view mirror – uh, well, the look on her face was priceless. Less angry. More frustrated. She clenched her fist by her side, and I muttered, “Go on . . . Shake your fist. Flip me off. Do something . . . You know you want to . . . Nobody’s looking . . . Ah, come on.” She really wasn’t much fun. Instead of doing anything, she turned and stomped off in a different direction. 

When I finally made it home after a long enough day, there was nobody there, which wasn’t unusual. What was out of the ordinary were the papers blowing into the entryway from the living room. My good humor all but disappeared as I grabbed a stake out of my gym bag and dropped the bag on the floor by the door. I think I’d like for there to be one day where the vampires in my life acted like normal people. We could just sit around and hang out without plotting the demise of someone or actively trying to kill someone or getting killed or fighting – just one day from start to finish without any drama except maybe to see who could win the most board games or who picked what to watch in a movie marathon or who could swing the farthest on a rope into a local watering hole or whatever it was that normal people did for fun.

Glancing around the corner into the living room, the state of disrepair in there was worse than I’d ever seen it. There were books everywhere and more papers scattered all over the place. Tables were upended, the couch was on its back, and chairs were all out of place, but what really drew my attention were the feet sticking out from the other side of the couch. Did they kill someone in here again? Well, wherever they were now, they weren’t here. This place felt empty.

With a sigh, I gripped my stake tighter as I inched towards the couch. There was no movement, and in almost no time at all, I was able to get close enough to see that it was the body of a woman, not that her shoes hadn’t given that away. I just didn’t know who this woman was. There were no bite marks, but her neck was broken. Hm. My eyes darted to the bookcase on the far side of the wall, and with one eye on her, I made my way over to it, so I could get one of my pistol crossbows that I had hidden beside it before making my way back to the dead woman on the floor. I didn’t know who she was, so I didn’t know what she was. She could be human, but she could also be a vampire. She wasn’t gray and drained of color, so if she was a vampire, she wasn’t permanently dead, which meant she could come back, and until I knew what the deal with her was, I guess it was my responsibility to guard her corpse.

When her eyes popped open, and she sat up with a gasp about 15 minutes later, I was sitting on a chair that I’d pulled up next to her. My crossbow was pointed at her chest. Her abrupt reanimation didn’t rattle me, because I’d been prepared for something like that to happen. The key was spacing. I had to be close enough for her not to be able to stop the bolt if I pulled the trigger, and yet far enough away that she couldn’t just grab my crossbow out of my hands. It helped that was I behind her. I didn’t know anything about her, so I needed to put myself in the best possible position. I let her get her bearings before calmly asking, “Who are you?”

She turned to look at me, but I lost her attention almost as fast as I’d gotten it when she started looking around the room. Her fist pounded the floor as she exclaimed, “That son of a – “

“Do you work for Klaus?”

“Honey, I don’t work for any man . . . or woman for that matter, and certainly not him.”

“Fine. Do you work _with_ Klaus?” There had to be a reason they hadn’t killed her instead of just snapping her neck. Did they plan on coming back to question her, or was there something else to it? 

With a derisive snort, she turned to get a better look at me. “Are you going to pull the trigger on that thing or – “

“Well, I’m not putting it down, but my housemates must’ve left you alive for a reason. I get the feeling they’d be even more annoyed with me than they already are if I killed you, or I would’ve done it while you were down.”

Turning to face me as she sat cross-legged on the floor, her posture relaxed, and she looked at me almost with a fresh pair of eyes. With a wry grin she said, “Ah, you must be the one who took their book.” 

My eyes flicked to the mess in the room that I could see behind her, and my shoulders slumped. “They made this mess looking for it, didn’t they?”

“They sure did.”

“And now they’re out somewhere, like the town archives, trying to figure out where that tree was used.” 

It was really more of a question than a statement. Looking around, the woman said, “That would be my guess.” She exhaled a brief laugh as she rubbed her neck and said, “It’s been a long time since anyone has gotten the better of me. I don’t know how she – “

“Alice?”

“Is that her name? I didn’t even know she was here. She’s fast. I’ll give her that much.”

“Well, she’s old.”

“Honey, I’m old. She’s something else.”

“Nah, I think I may have accidentally kidnapped her a few days ago. She’s been looking for a way to vent. You were just in the right place at the right time.”

“I think you mean the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Not really. “Well, I know more about her than I do you, so I’m going to have to side with her on this one. What’d you do to piss her off, make them think you were on their side and then let them know you weren’t, because you thought you were the oldest vampire in the house?”

Rubbing her neck again as she looked off to the side, the woman said, “Something like that.” Turning her head to look at me, her eyes narrowed in thought. “I’m 900 years old.”

“She’s older.”

The woman relaxed again and snorted, like she was relieved not to have been bested by a younger vampire. “Where’s she been hiding all this time?”

“In an invisible house in Savannah for the last couple hundred years. Before that? I have no idea.” My eyes swept the room, and I said, “It must’ve taken them a while to figure out that I got to the milling ledger first.”

“Didn’t take Damon long after we got here.”

As soon as he said it, Stefan would’ve immediately felt like an idiot and thought that of course I had. “So, on a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 meaning they thought it was funny, and 10 meaning I should probably find somewhere else to live . . . how angry were they when they couldn’t find the book?”

“Between the two of them, I'd put it at around a 7. I got the impression that if it were anyone else, it’d be an 11, but they seemed to think it was something you would do.”

So they hadn’t felt outright betrayal. I’d take it. That might change if they knew I had something that could kill Klaus and hadn’t told them. In fairness to me, they’d done all kinds of things behind my back to bring Esther back from the dead, so I shouldn’t care if they felt betrayed by me, but there was a small part of me that did, just not a very big part. In fact, I’d say it was just big enough for me to know it was there and forget about it, because it wasn’t enough for me to change my mind about telling them or hand what I had over to them. “Yeah, I wouldn’t have told Stefan what I thought Rebekah wanted if I hadn’t already dealt with the book.”

“Damon said as much.” Acting as if an idea had just hit her, she said, “You know it’s just a matter of time before they find what they’re after, right?”

Yeah, I didn’t buy her act. She’d already thought of that and had probably expressed it in some way, or she wouldn’t have wound up with a broken neck. Not saying that Alice hadn’t overreacted, but there was something wrong about this woman being here. “I doubt it. What was a matter of time was them finding out what Rebekah knows. Better they find out from me than cross her.”

“So, I take it you had a peek and know where to find what this white oak was used in around town?” 

Alice felt this vampire was a big enough threat to her mission of ending Kol that she’d reacted hastily and let someone possibly from Klaus’s camp know that she was here . . . and yet this vampire was still alive. Either Alice wasn’t up to the task of killing her more permanently, or Damon and Stefan talked her out of it before talking her into coming with them on their new quest, so one of them didn’t have to stay behind and keep her from finishing the job. Maybe it was the second of those. Maybe she was a friend. 

I couldn’t overlook Alice’s reaction to her though, and this vampire might as well have admitted that she was working alongside Klaus on this particular endeavor even if she hadn’t said it. I did NOT want him knowing I knew where the white oak was, or at least I didn’t want him to know how long I’d known any more than I wanted Damon and Stefan to know. How did I get out of this? I needed more information.

“Why are you working with Klaus?”

The corners of her mouth turned up as she said, “I wasn’t when I got here, but I have my reasons now. Why did you burn the book?”

“I have my own reasons.” My eyes narrowed, while I considered it. “You don’t like him, so it isn’t him you’re really helping . . . Elijah, Kol, Rebekah – “

“That stuck up bitch? Not a chance.”

“So, it’s Finn.” As if I needed more of a confirmation after her not having reacted at all to Elijah or Kol’s names, she practically melted at the mention of Finn. “I’m guessing that turning you must’ve been one of the last things he ever did . . . 900 years is a long time.”

Seeing that there was no point in denying it, she admitted, “I love him as much now as I did the last day I saw him.”

Too bad he was the suicidal one out of the lot of them. She might be useful in keeping him from going along with Esther’s plans. I filed that away under useful information and said, “But still . . . 900 years is a long time. How do I know that if they find a way to remove the link, you won’t go after Klaus, since he’s the one who robbed you of all this time with Finn?”

Sensing a negotiation was on the books, she sat back as she said, “I see no reason to pursue vengeance as long as Finn and I can finally be together as far away from the rest of his family as possible.”

“Uh huh.” I still didn’t know her, so I wasn’t exactly going to take her at her word. “You still haven’t told me who you are.”

The faintest of smiles lifted the corners of her mouth as she said, “Well, what would be the fun in that?”

Ugh. Vampire amusement seemed to hinge entirely too much on annoying me. I wonder if that’s how Elena felt about me right now. Well if it was, then she was probably more angry about me running away from her than she had been about her real grievances, so that was a win for me. As for this vampire, I had no idea what I should do about her. I’d kill her and live with the consequences of having annoyed Damon and Stefan even more than I already had, because I think it’s one they’d get over easily enough, but something told me that I could maybe use her presence here as an opportunity. In a way, our interests aligned. I couldn’t admit I knew where that wood was, because it’d make me a target for just about everyone, including this woman . . . But if the wood was no longer out there, it wouldn’t matter if I knew where it was, or it wouldn’t as long as I didn’t waste time in having someone get rid of it for me. 

So far, I’d created a nice little alibi for myself today, but what about tonight or tomorrow or the next day? If I took much longer, then it left room for me to have gone to the bridge to tear off a few planks for myself, or that’s the way Klaus would see it. I could destroy the wood under the bridge myself, but that might be a step too far for both Stefan and Damon, and I didn’t want to make it seem like it was my idea to get rid of it. That blame could go on this woman. I just needed to give her a nudge in the right direction. 

Is this how villains thought? Probably, but I was well aware of my darker side, and I’d told everyone repeatedly that I had one. I wasn’t good. I wasn’t bad. I was somewhere in between, so really, I was doing something kind of bad to save someone. Then why was I feeling the tiniest bit guilty about it? I had no good answer for that other than maybe I was also trying to get out of the consequences for something I’d done weeks ago and hadn’t thought anyone would ever find about . . . which made this somewhat selfish. When was I going to have a chance to do something truly altruistic? Maybe never. I just don’t think that’s the world I lived in, or maybe it wasn’t the world I’d created for myself, or the world I’d had created for me by my upbringing. Who knew? That inkling of guilt wasn’t going to change my mind now that I had something of a plan. 

“As far as I can tell, my housemates know you. Without having been here, I can’t say for sure whether they know you well enough to let you in here of their own free will, but what I can say is that they at least know you well enough to have not killed you when they had the chance, and that’s the only reason you’re still alive if you are in direct opposition to them. Other than that, all I know is that you’re a woman who has also spent the last 900 years pining for the same man. You’re going to have to replace that pining with something else. Why not revenge?”

Her smile grew. “I’m sure you can use your imagination to figure out what I’ll be replacing my time with once I have him back.” Cute, but it was another successful dodge on the question of her name. While I figured out a way to get at least that much out of her, she sat forward and said, “What I want to know is why you don’t want them dead when the people in your life do.”

“Klaus isn’t all bad.”

“It isn’t him.” Her eyes narrowed as she scrutinized me. “There isn’t any passion there.”

“I don’t mind Elijah.”

“Nope.”

“Rebekah’s entertaining even if she hasn’t actually come back to school to entertain me.”

“Try again.”

I actually found it somewhat humorous to be on the receiving end of someone else studying me to see where my weakness was. “Kol wrote a book I use and that may have very well saved me life. Maybe I owe him for that.”

“No.” She sat back as she said, “You might feel you owe him for something that may come up on down the road, but it’s not enough for you to go against your housemates on something that’s as important to them as this is.” Her eyes narrowed again as she said, “It’s one of them . . . isn’t it?”

“Letting the people I live with try to kill that family doesn’t seem like the brightest of ideas. It may spill over onto me.”

A faint smirk graced her face before she said, “You aren’t worried that this might spill over onto you. Even when you complain about it, I bet you get a rush out of the entire situation, of being pitted against everyone else, and that . . . that is something I can relate to . . . that’s how I’ve lived my life, squeezing enjoyment out of every second.” Her smirk fell as she added, “And yet there’s something more, because to enjoy life, you have to have a reason to want to live it . . . so which one is it?”

And now I was pretty sure that I knew who she was. I responded by resting my crossbow in my lap. “Sage?” It threw her for the briefest of moments before her smile grew 10x brighter.

“You’ve heard of me.”

“I know you’re the one who taught Damon to have some fun with being a vampire. Before that, he was simply going through the motions. You let him know it was okay to enjoy it . . . Sometimes that’s all people need to let go – permission.”

Maintaining a tight grasp on her composure, she responded with, “So, it’s Damon.”

“Well, I’m not going to lead by saying that Stefan was never really a fan. He never thought much about you one way or the other, except to think that maybe if you’d never met his brother, Damon would’ve turned out differently.” I’d gotten all that from Damon. Well, I hadn’t gotten why Stefan may not have thought much of her from Damon. That was pure conjecture, but it’s what I assumed he thought of her if he ever thought of her. After the last time he saw her, he’d been pretty busy for the next decade being a ripper, so chances are he hadn’t thought much of her at all.

Her eyes tightened. I know for a fact that I sold it with just the right amount of disdain if I was on Stefan's side. A moment later, she mentioned the only other person who could have screwed this up. “You want me to think it could be either of them, but Damon would say something else entirely, wouldn’t he?” She sat back a little further with a chuckle before saying, “He’s never been one to hide his emotions, and the kind of explosive anger and understanding all wrapped up in the pride that I saw earlier? That’s where the passion is.”

I wasn’t ready to concede defeat quite so easily. “He might have a crush.”

Leaning close in a conspiratorially way, she responded, “I think we both know it’s a little more than a crush. You don’t strike me as the type to suffer one if it isn’t something you want. You could live anywhere you wanted, and yet you live here.” 

“I’m not made of money.”

“Family?”

“None left that are really family.” She hesitated, and I said, “I have a biological sister and a cousin. They were raised as siblings in a totally different family . . . This house is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a home.” Looking around at it, I added, “And it’s been trashed.” I bet Stefan did most of this before Damon got home. My rooms probably weren’t too bad if Damon’s the one who went through them, but the rest of the house? If it were anywhere else, I’d write it off and move onto the next place rather than clean it. “Someone is going to have to clean all this up. That someone will probably have to be me . . . unless you want to help, Miss. Lives-Life-to-the-Fullest, but something tells me it’s a little low on fun for you.”

She watched me. “You’re good.” 

I dead-panned, “At cleaning? I’m really not. I don’t think I can adequately find the words to describe how much I loathe tidying.”

“He must mean a lot to you.”

 _Get off of this subject, so we can get to how you can help me._ “How much does Finn mean to you?”

“Everything.”

“Then stop trying to figure me out and help me figure out a way to undo the spell that links Finn to the others, because right now, your Finn is the weak link in chain.”

With some concern, she asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that Finn is the one who helped his Mom link all of them in the first place, and he’s the one who volunteered to be her sacrifice, so they’d all die. I’m not saying he doesn’t love you, but he may not know you’re still alive. He has no reason to keep living. He hates what he is . . . he needs you to remind him that it’s not all bad.”

She immediately looked taken aback by that. “He wouldn’t – “

“He already tried once. The reason I don’t want him linked to them is because he’s the most likely one out of the lot to die, so either find him and keep him safe until I find a witch who will undo that linking spell, or help me find a witch that doesn’t hate vampires. If you help, then you won’t constantly be wondering if he’s going to drop dead if and when one of his siblings does. It’s only a matter of time before one of them dies. Their mother came back from the dead to do this. How serious do you think she is about it?”

Finally starting to take me a little bit more seriously, she took a second to appraise me before saying, “I believe you don’t want any of them dead.”

“Good, because I don’t.”

“But it isn’t for any of them, so – “

“Why does it matter as long as you know that you and I are essentially in the same boat? If Klaus dies . . . someone important to us does too. It’s as simple as that.”

“You’re a hunter?”

I retorted with a flippant, “Yeah, what gave it away?” and she smiled briefly.

“You bagged Alice?”

 _In other words, am I a good hunter? Yeah, most of the time, I think I am a pretty good hunter._ “I did . . . just before I killed her husband.”

There was a twinkle in her eyes as she said, “Wow . . . and then you brought her here. You really do like living on the edge, don’t you?”

“I don’t know why I did it. Killing her seemed as wrong as it did right, so I’m giving her a chance.”

In a reversal of what I’d asked her earlier, Sage said, “If they’re unlinked . . . how do I know you won’t come after us?”

Now we were getting to the important questions. “I could come after you, but Finn is immortal.”

“You expect me to believe you don’t have a weapon that can kill him?”

“I expect you to believe that I have no interest in Finn whatsoever. I can only hunt what I know is there. Keep it clean – snatch, heal, erase, and I’ll never know the difference, but if I hear about bodies or a weird pattern in missing person’s, then I will. As for the others, they don’t care about Finn for any other reason than he’s the one they think they can talk into helping them kill Klaus. Klaus is their primary target, not his siblings.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I did. You just didn’t like the answer.” Time to turn this around. “But what could I do to convince you?”

She grinned and exhaled a short breath before saying, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’ll bite . . . I’d take it as a sign of good faith if you told me where that wood went. I think we both know that they’ll find it eventually. I’d rather they never found it.”

 _Play hard to get, and you might just get out of this with a reasonable amount of plausible deniability._ “I might need it in the future, and I haven’t had a chance to go there yet.”

In an attempt to figure out what it was I wanted her to say next, she tried, “You know what I haven’t had a chance to do yet?”

“Kill the people who mean something to me?”

She nodded in faux-seriousness. “Exactly . . . starting with Damon.”

Those were the magic words. Technically, it was her idea, and I had to tell her about the bridge to keep Damon safe, so I couldn’t exactly be blamed for what she did after I told her, could I? “Well, I guess if you must know, then the Wickery Bridge might be a good place for you to try.” Her eyebrows arched, and I nodded. What I’d said was true. She returned my nod with one of her own to say ‘thanks,’ before getting to her feet. Extending a hand, she said, “Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you . . . “

“Eve.” I stood and looked at her hand. “I don’t shake hands, Sage, but I appreciate the sentiment. You’ve been, uh . . . more helpful than you know.” 

Giving me her most genuine smile as I stood to walk her out, she said, “Likewise, Eve.” We stopped at the door, and she added, “I can see why Damon likes you,” before pulling the door open herself, and the next words out of my mouth were, “Oh, shit,” because there was Elena with her hand poised to knock. She really was persistent.


	65. What Is It Worth to You?

“Who is that?” I sent Sage off with a wave, knowing what she was about to do to that bridge, and closed the door before looking at my twin to answer her question.

“I’m not entirely sure. I think her name might be Sage, but really that was a guess on my part that she confirmed, so she could be anyone, since there was nobody here to verify it.”

Now that she had me, it would appear Elena didn’t know what to say. Ducking her head, Elena looked at her hands briefly before saying, “You’ve been dodging me.”

“Yeah, it’s been a blast, hasn’t it?” 

I gave her a bright smile before turning to walk into the living room, and it seemed to have the desired effect, because she followed me and started building on some pretty good anger. “I called and texted and today at school – “ All that anger fizzled when she got a look at the room. “What happened in here?”

Hm. I was waiting for her to blow up, and right now, it seemed like she was finding any reason not to do it. I didn’t understand that. Maybe she’d wanted to talk to me because something was wrong. Well, if that’s why she’d been chasing after me all day, then it put our entirely one-sided game in a different light, but I wasn’t going to drag it out of her. She was a big girl. If she had something to say, she could get there on her own. I glanced at her over my shoulder before stepping down into the living room. “I think your boyfriend lost his mind.”

“Stefan did this?”

“Most of it. I’m sure Damon helped. They were looking for something.”

“The milling ledger?”

She said it so quietly that if I hadn’t been standing right in front of her, I’m sure I would’ve missed it. So nothing was wrong per se. She just thought I knew something or had something that she and her club wanted. I did, but that wasn’t the point. When I looked at her, it was in absolute disgust. “Are you kidding me? You should be here to yell at me for taking your brother and – “

“Of course you shouldn’t have done that! You had no right to take him anywhere, but especially on . . . ”

Turning away from her with a sigh, I shook my head. Her volume was right, but I didn’t exactly feel a punch to the gut in response to rightfully being yelled at for something wrong I’d done. “See, now that has no impact. You’ve allowed me to steal your thunder by saying it first, because you’d rather play spy than say what’s really on your mind.” I bent down to right one of the small tables and started tidying up some of the loose papers, while I said, “So go on . . . Yell at me, but really mean it this time, and remember that I deserve it . . . Remember how it felt when you were down in those tunnels and had no idea if he’d been taken too . . . Think about how bad you felt when you got back home and realized he hadn’t been there for a couple of days. Use those feelings you felt then and try again.” She didn’t immediately respond, and I glanced up at her before going back to doing what I was doing. _Maybe something is wrong with her._ A second glance told me that what I’d just thought is what she was thinking about me. I don’t think either of us was wrong. Mine was just a more of a chronic problem. Hers was probably more short term.

She didn’t say what she was thinking fast enough for me, so I said, “I didn’t do it to hurt you.”

“Are you sure about that? You didn’t do it to get back at me for what happened at the ball?”

I gave her a briefly confused look. “By the time I found him in my trunk, that’d already been forgotten.”

“He was in your trunk?” After a single nod, I went back to picking up the rest of the papers in this little patch of the room. “So you didn’t just take him? And before you think it, I know it’s not something you would’ve had to force him to do against his will.”

I watched her for a few seconds. Was it progress that she didn’t think I’d kidnapped him? I guess. “What, you think I had time to swing by your house and tell him he should come on a road trip with me?” 

She bowed her head briefly before sighing and then bent down to start picking up a couple of books near where she was standing. “No . . . I didn’t really think of the specifics on how it happened, and he’s not talking to me at all about any of it . . . Well, he did shove a newspaper in my hands and told me to read it before he slammed his bedroom door in my face . . . You saved all those people?” I shrugged a shoulder in response while riffling through the stack of papers to see if I could make any kind of sense out of them, and she asked, “Was he involved?”

That immediately got my attention, but I didn’t have an immediate reply ready. “That’s a complicated answer.”

“No it’s not. He was either there, or – “

“No, see, I told him he could come to the house with me if he did the research and figured it out before I left the motel, but it took me years to see the patterns, so he never really had a chance. Plus, he’s intellectually lazy, which – “

“Hey! He’s not dumb. He’s – “

“Intellectually lazy, like I said. I’ve seen how smart he can be when he really puts his mind to it. I’ve also seen how little he listens when it isn’t something he wants to hear, and there’s absolutely no way I was going to let him go with me when it would’ve gotten both of us killed, so I found someone to keep him away, and even then, he and his babysitter were standing outside the house when I got out there, because Jeremy gave him the slip. Neither one of them could actually find the house until it was all over, so he wasn’t a part of the actual hunt, but he was there, and he did go into the house after I got out to see if something I had worked to break the spell on the three most recent victims, and it did. The house was really way too dangerous for him to go into, but – “

“How?!”

“Hm?”

“How was the house too dangerous for – “

With an exasperated sigh, I answered, “What do houses look like when they’ve had tornado damage? It was a death trap. I’m sure the first-responders had to be extremely careful when they went in there to get the other men.”

“He isn’t trained for something like that! What if it’d fallen down with him inside? Why didn’t you go in instead to – “

This felt a little like she was still working up faux-outrage to me. She was saying what she thought she should say, because she wanted to make up for not noticing he was gone until he was almost back, but she didn’t really mean it, so I put a quick end to it. “Because I took a pretty nasty hit to the head and was seeing multiple houses . . . multiple roads, multiple Jeremies, multiple cars, multiple – “

“You look fine now.”

So not quite a kidnapper, but not exactly a truth teller. Fair enough, I guess, even though I disputed that I was an outright liar. I said what I needed to say to get the information I needed for hunts but saw that more as playing a part. I didn’t count it as lying, just like I didn’t count holding my cards close to my chest as a lie. I exhaled a laugh before finishing with the stack of papers and moving over to pick up another small table and a lamp. When I looked at her, I said, “I think we both know why.”

She stood carrying an armful of books. “Did you almost die again?!” 

Again with the faux-anger. I picked up my own set of books, while muttering, “Doubtful. It was probably just a bad concussion.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

I rolled my eyes. Why add more drama to the situation than was warranted? “I couldn’t afford to be out of the game as long as it would’ve taken for me to heal naturally. Let’s leave it at that.” 

She went to the bookcase and started trying to shelve the books as she said, “If Jeremy wasn’t there, then how’d he get the bruise?”

Ooops. “I punched him.”

She turned to look at me in slack-jawed surprise. “You did what?”

“I didn’t know what he was. All I knew was somebody was in my trunk, so I punched him.” She threw me an annoyed look before going back to what she’d been doing. 

“By babysitter, do you mean Alex?”

“Yeah . . . I’m still not sure about him.”

“You don’t trust anyone.”

“Do you trust him?”

She hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

“Which is exactly what I just said . . . Anyway, it was probably wrong to leave him for you to deal with when you already have Imelda, but I didn’t know where else to put him. I couldn’t leave him out in the woods. I can’t let him live here, and he seemed to get along well enough with Jeremy.”

“A little too well.” I looked over at her, and she huffed out a frustrated sigh as she finished with the last of her books. “He’s not talking to me, but when he is talking, it’s all about being a hunter with Alex.”

“Uh, yeah. He was doing that before he met Alex. He’s got some serious anger issues and dealing with it by hunting is not something he or the world needs. I tried telling him. I’m not sure any of it got through.”

Walking over to another area of the room that needed work, Elena said, “Yeah, well he still seems to think you’re great, so you don’t have to worry.”

Now that had been tinged with some genuine bitterness. I used my foot to pick up a chair on my way over to the book shelves with an armful of books and said, “Wasn’t worried. Couldn’t care less what he thinks of me as long as he isn’t a hunter.” I paused to glance at her over my shoulder, and she seemed deep in thought as she focused on her work. “But you do care what he thinks of you.”

Her response was immediate and explosive. “Of course I care! _I’m_ his sister!”

Finally, some real anger, just not for the reason I would’ve thought. I turned to put the books away and a minute later said, “He’s not trying to replace you with me . . . if that’s what you’re thinking. He’s trying to get your attention. He thinks you care more about the vampires in your life than you do him.”

“That’s not true.”

Without looking at her, I replied, “Maybe not, but it’s how he feels, so it’s true to him. I’d say that’s a fair bit of the reason why he is considering hunting as an option . . . and it’s also why he’s not talking to you. It’s not because of whatever you two argued about when he got back. It’s because it took you so long to notice he was gone.”

She softly asked, “Did he say that?”

When I looked back at her, she was sitting on the arm of a chair. “Basically.”

She went from looking lost to sharply focusing on me. “No, I need to know exactly what he said.”

“Uh,” I looked up at the ceiling, while I tried to remember. “How long do you think it’ll be before anyone notices I’m gone? When isn’t Elena wrapped up in something more important? Um – “

“Okay, I get it.”

I looked down at her. “Do you?”

“Yeah, I’m failing him, and I don’t know how – “

“You are, but don’t say you don’t know how to fix it. I think you do.” I’m guessing that probably wasn’t the right thing to say based on the look she gave me. Maybe I was supposed to say she was doing a great job and make excuses for her to make her feel better, but that wasn’t the truth. “You’re his sister. It’s not your responsibility to be his Mom or Dad, and I would never say that it is. That’s not how you’re failing him. It’s normal for him to grieve the death of your parents, and there is nothing you can do to fix that. What was entirely avoidable was making his grieving process more difficult with the deaths of Vicki and Anna. You didn’t have a very strong emotional connection to either of them, so you might’ve felt bad that they died, but imagine how you’d feel if Stefan died, and Jeremy went through that twice. To fix it, you need to get rid of the chance that something like that will ever happen to him again. If you cut the supernatural out of your life, it’d go a long way in helping him process his grief in all its stages.”

Sitting up taller, she asked, “Wait, so what are you saying?”

“I’m saying he has it hard enough as it is. Both of you do, and you shouldn’t let him rule your life, or dictate who you date, but that’s under normal circumstances. Adding the supernatural into it makes it worse. It puts him in danger. It puts you in danger. You both lose people because of it. That’s the other reason he wants to be a hunter, and if he does that, then he will die.”

“You can’t say – “

“I can absolutely say that if he continues on this path, that is what he will become, and there is never a good ending for hunters . . . If he’s wrong, and they don’t mean more to you than he does, then put him first and take him out of town. He’s got an escape plan mapped out for both of you in the event you have to go. Use it. Find somewhere safe. Live your own life, and he’ll live his. It’s not like he’s going to throw a fit every time you find someone to date. It’s what you are surrounding you two with right now that is the problem.”

“How can you – “

Oh please. “Because I’m right.” 

“I can’t – “

“You can if you want.”

“No. I can’t. I can’t just leave my house where my parents raised us.”

“It’s just a house. The memories will go with you.”

“That’s easy for you to say.“

She might be right. If I had to pick up and move from this house tomorrow, I may feel a passing annoyance or momentary sadness that this part of my life was over, but I’d be able to do it and move on from it relatively quickly, so long as Damon was with me. If Damon died, then I’d be out of here as fast as humanly possible. I might bring an object or two to remind me of him, but to be surrounded by memories of him? No. I had a different way of coping. “Probably.” 

“And what about Bonnie and Caroline? They’re all I have left. I can’t - “

“I’d say leave them and don’t tell them where you are, but it might be best if they left too and head in a different direction, because if they stay behind there are untold ways that Klaus could hurt them in an effort to find you. It wouldn’t matter to him if they knew where you are or not.” 

Elena stood from her seat. “See, they’re just as stuck as I am!”

Was she not listening? She wasn’t stuck in anything she wasn’t willfully sticking herself to right now. “None of you are stuck. You just don’t like the options you have. Leave the only town you’ve ever known and run until you find somewhere else to settle down, but know that you’ll always have to look over your shoulder, or stay and fight. You’re all choosing to fight, and I understand that. I even commend it, but what you don’t seem to understand is that in any war, there are casualties, so don’t be surprised if Jeremy dies, because by staying that is a possibility. Caroline might as well get used to the idea that her Mom or her Dad or Tyler might die. Tyler has to consider the possibility that his Mom or Caroline might die. And Bonnie . . . well, Bonnie really shouldn’t be surprised that her Mom was turned into a vampire.”

At that, Elena went from fighting her corner to a big hysterical pile of goo as she began sobbing rather unexpectedly. I waited about 10 awkward seconds before finally asking, “What’s wrong with you?”

“That’s my fault too!”

What was her fault? “Uhhh . . . “

Throwing herself on the arm of a chair, Elena cried, “I mean that’s what she thinks, and she’s right, isn’t she?”

“Who?”

“Bonnie!”

“Oh. Umm . . . unless you sprouted fangs and – “

“This isn’t a joke! Why can’t you ever take things seriously?”

 _Why are you a blubbering mess in my living room?_ “My point still stands. You didn’t turn her. Damon did.”

“To save me!”

I muttered, “Okay, I see all rationality has left the room,” before putting the books on the shelves haphazardly and going to sit on an armchair across from her. I watched her for a few seconds before finally saying, “If he hadn’t done it, you would be dead.”

“I know that!”

“Well then I’m at a bit of a loss. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

She looked up at me. “What would you have done if you’d been here?”

Still unsure, I tried, “I don’t know. I was running an experiment on my own witch. If I’d already known it would work, and if I was here, I probably would’ve used that, but given the knowledge you guys had, it was the best tactical resolution to the situation that any of you had at your disposal.“

“How can you say that?! Bonnie’s Mom died!”

I shrugged a shoulder and drily replied, “And came back. I’m familiar with the concept.”

“Then you know – “

I stopped her before she could get too far into my Mom, a woman she didn’t know. “What I know is that Bonnie’s Mom took off for most of her life, so Bonnie was really only just getting to know her anyway, and her Mom is still alive, which means there’s still something for her to get to know.”

An idea hit Elena all at once and seemed to dry most of those tears as she said, “You really don’t understand . . . You don’t think what happened to her Mom is a big deal, do you?” I started to shake my head, and she said, “He knew you wouldn’t. I mean I wouldn’t expect him to be apologetic about anything, but you give him free license to do whatever he feels like whenever – “

In exasperation, I asked, “Who are you talking about now?!”

“Damon.”

“He didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Of course _you_ would say that.”

But he really hadn’t. “The only reason you’re here right now to chastise me about anything is because – “

“he saved me for you! I mean he’s made it perfectly clear that he didn’t do it for me, so – “

“Do you ever make sense?”

“What’s going on between you and Damon?!”

Oh for crying out loud! This was two, yes two, people in less than half an hour who had questioned me about him. I don’t know why I ever thought it was something that could be kept hidden. I guess maybe part of me knew, but I’d ignored it. Klaus was too wrapped up in everything else going on in this town to have any sort of interest in my personal life, so that wasn’t even the entire reason I wanted it hidden. I was a hunter. I didn’t want every enemy I made to go after Damon as a way to get back at me. I certainly wasn’t sure what to do with Alice around. I still expected her to rip his heart out when I least expected it, because I’d had a moment of weakness and rested my head on his arm the first night I brought her here, and he wasn’t exactly as careful around me as I’d like either. I also wanted something that was just mine that I could keep as secret as I used to be, since everything else was examined under a microscope. 

Rather than lie about it, I chose to change the subject. “What were you protecting me from the night of the ball?”

She was totally caught off guard with that one. Sitting up straight she quickly looked at the exit without realizing it before saying, “I can’t tell you.”

Hm. I’d just been saying that to get her off of the Damon topic, but whatever it was must be good if it had her looking for ways to flee at the mere mention of it. “Sure you can.” 

“Why won’t you just answer my question?”

Ditto. I heard the front door open and immediately felt the weight of having to now deal with the fallout from them not being able to find the ledger. I still got to my feet, so I could face this one head on and said, “Take some time to think about what it's worth to you. You answer my question, and I’ll answer yours.”


	66. Playing the Game

Before anyone other than Stefan had made their way into the living room, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, and the look on Stefan’s face was enough to make me answer it. He didn’t want to fight, or at least he didn’t want to physically fight, and I decided in that moment that I wasn’t in the mood to argue. It’d already been a long day. Besides, I really needed to stall until I figured out what I was going to do. It should be as simple as me saying, ‘I burned it,’ and then they’d get angry about what they already suspected and move on with their lives thinking that there was no way to bring Klaus down in a lethal kind of way. They might even get on board with figuring out another way to get him out of our hair, but life was never that easy, and neither were emotions. Apparently, phone calls weren’t either. I really should’ve checked to see who it was before answering.

_”Hello, Eve.”_

The voice I knew. It was not one I welcomed at that time. I’d hoped to put this off for longer . . . maybe forever? I was getting so tired of being a player in all of these games. It could be argued that I had been playing these kinds of games my entire life, but the difference was that before I was really more of a pawn of the witches and my parents. Somehow, this pawn had managed to make her way across the board and reinvent herself as a queen. It meant making myself more of a target, becoming a legitimate threat in my own right, and an actual player in the game. Along with that came the responsibility of having to live with whatever strategy I chose in order to win long-term. It was difficult, tiring, and I just needed more time to figure it all out. This wasn’t a quick fight or battle. Those were fine, because they were over and done with almost as soon as they started. This was a sustained attack from all sides, and I was sure that I was going to drop one of the plates I had spinning if I didn’t go about this the right way. 

As I got to Stefan, on my way out of the room, my hand reached out on it’s own accord and patted him on the shoulder. I don’t know if it was meant to show solidarity even though we weren’t on the same team, or if it was more of a conciliatory apology, because I’d beat him at a game that had sucked from the very beginning. Maybe it was a non-verbal attempt to put his mind at ease over what he was surely about to hear, but however it was intended, Stefan seemed to take it as cause for concern, because he went from looking angry to confused to worried in the matter of microseconds before putting his hand up to halt Alice from saying or doing anything as I muttered, “Klaus,” on my way past them.

_”I hear a thank you is in order.”_

That was the thing about vampires. Good or bad, things moved quickly when you were dealing with them. If that bridge had already been destroyed, then I guess that my betrayal of my housemates was now complete, and I had to live with the consequences. I flicked a look in Stefan’s direction as I rounded the corner on my way to my room, but it’s not like I had to look far. He seemed to be following me. I should be concerned he might attack. Instead I rolled my eyes and exhaled a soft sigh of annoyance. “Don’t be so hasty. Your troubles don’t end there. You still have a filicidal mother running around out there, and a suicidal brother that wants to help her. How close are you to unlinking yourself from him?”

_”When it comes to matters of my family, I think it’s best if you leave it with me.”_

I saw his point. Aside from a perfunctory compliment at the ball, this was the first time he’d spoken to me in quite a while, and that was primarily because I’d released his siblings from their prisons. I also killed his father. He'd been more upset that I’d stolen his chance to do that than he had been about his father actually being dead. Killing his mother? He probably wanted her dead. I mean he had killed her once already, but I wasn’t sure if there was some kind of old-school vendetta that he might feel he should hold against me if I was the one who made him an orphan . . . I guess he had made me one, but that wasn’t why I’d do it to him. He just came from a family of monsters, and his parents were the worst ones out of the lot. “Remember that when you come for my sister.” I paused long enough for that to sink in before adding, “But I see what you mean. I do seem to have a tendency to bulldoze my way into your family drama, don’t I?”

There was a brief moment of silence, almost like he was remembering all the times I had before he said, _”Indeed you do . . . I have yet to speak with you about the part you played in the sudden resurrection of my brothers and sister.”_

I flipped on the light to my bedroom and made my way to the window, so I could open it. I was mostly on autopilot. A plan was forming, but it was mostly taking cues from what my instincts told me to do. “Like Elijah wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t.”

It sounded like he was grinning as he said, _“It is quite refreshing to hear you admit it.”_

Reaching under my bed, I grabbed a satchel and threw it on the mattress before going to grab some weapons. “I have no reason not to admit it.”

_”And my daggers?”_

No point in beating around the bush. “You’re not getting those daggers back. They’re mine now.”

_“Eve – “_

“They could be anywhere. Maybe I hid them around town. Maybe I hid them in different parts of the country. Maybe I gave them to Elijah.”

_”Yes, I heard you went to see him.”_

“I know he didn’t tell you, but I’m not surprised.” He may not be the guy I was expecting before we met, but he did have all those networks of unseen masses at his disposal that I had grown up in anonymity to try and avoid. “Look at it this way. Now you have to learn how to deal with your siblings in a more responsible way.” 

I silently plucked through my stash to find the weapons I needed most, and he responded, _”So, it was all to teach me a lesson.”_

He didn’t believe that for a second. I turned and went back to the bed, so I could pack away what I’d gotten, and muttered, “There could be a lot of reasons why I took them. Maybe I just wanted them. They are unusual weapons to have.”

He didn’t have to say, ‘And useful,’ for me to hear it in the silence that followed. _“I thought you more than a common thief.”_

“I am . . . but I really wanted these. They’re important . . . I’m not going to explain all the details why.” On my way back to the cabinet, I altered the course of the conversation, slightly. “What I’d like to know is how my family ended up with the dagger that I can only assume was meant for your father . . . Is there a story there?”

_“There may be one . . . I might be willing to tell it if I were to get my daggers back.”_

I exhaled an incredulous laugh. “I’m still waiting on my bouncy castle. Think I’ll pass.”

_”In fairness, I wasn’t sure that you deserved that.”_

“What happened with your mother’s coffin after our deal was made on the other three coffins should have no bearing on the deal itself, and I’m a little disappointed that you think it should . . . You lose all credibility when you fail to follow through on your end of an agreement.”

_“Will we ever make through a conversation without you lecturing me?”_

“Will you ever behave, so I don’t have to lecture you?” 

_“I think I’ve behaved quite well given the circumstances.”_

He wasn’t entirely wrong. He had taken hit after hit without really retaliating. I think he’d really only physically hurt Stefan once. I had no doubt that was because of his genuine belief that underneath it all, Stefan, was his friend. “You need better friends. I think your vision on what they are and what they should be are really off.”

_“Are you volunteering?”_

I paused before tossing a look at Stefan. I really needed to get the wording of this right, and it had nothing to do with the vampire at my door. “I don’t have friends, and based on what I’ve seen, I’m sure that if we were friends, you’d find a way to screw me over in the most egregious ways possible. Then you’d be surprised when I retaliated, because the bond of friendship is only sacred to you when you’re the one who has behaved badly.” 

_”Meaning?”_

“Meaning that you think you can do whatever you want to people you care about, but they should forgive and forget, because that’s what friends are supposed to do. It’s entirely one-sided . . . That’s a good way to make enemies, not friends.” I hesitated before grabbing a box of ammo and then turned to go back to the bed, while I added, “But don’t feel bad. I learned a long time ago that’s just the way people are. It’s just that your ability to be bad is . . . well . . . legendary.” With a soft sigh, I put the ammo in my bag before going to grab some clothes and said, “With a dash of added paranoia that makes you believe that those close to you will eventually betray you, so you think you need to act first, which starts the whole vicious cycle over again.” When he didn’t immediately respond, I finished by saying, “Anyway, my job here seems to be done for the moment, and I have another hunt . . . so I’m going away for a while.”

_“Stay away from my mother, Little Wolf Killer.”_

“Don’t want me making you an orphan?”

_“I am the one who tore her heart out the first time around.”_

I finished getting the clothes I wanted and made my way back to my bag. “Then what’s the problem?”

_“I’d like the chance to prove to you that I am better than you think. That won’t happen if you’re dead.”_

It wasn’t that he doubted my abilities. He just had her built up in his mind because of she was his Mom. That made it seem inconceivable to him that anyone other than him could defeat her. “Just get yourself unlinked from the rest of them.”

I hung up and started zipping my bag as Stefan said, “Is that what you’re doing? Hunting Esther?”

“No.” I tossed a look at him over my shoulder, and it would appear that I needed to explain. “He’s coming for me. He may not even know it yet, but he is, and he isn’t self-aware enough to know that I just told him why.” Most of our conversation was about something entirely different than what we were actually saying. Klaus had wanted to know if I had any part of that bridge. He couldn’t be sure, but if I did, he probably had an idea now that I’d respond the way I had about the daggers. I’d also tried to distance myself from any friends I may have, while also letting him know that even if I had the thing he thought I might, I wasn’t going to use it against him, but I also made sure he knew that if he came for me, then I would expect it, and he should expect me to retaliate – or at least that’s the way I saw it.

“Don’t leave. If you stay, then we could protect – “

I turned back to my bag. “I don’t need your protection . . . It’s not me he’ll hurt. He already has some kind of a weird idea of what he is to me – friend, custodian, mentor, someone he wants to prove himself to . . . “ I stepped to the door and grabbed my leather coat before slipping it on and turned to Stefan. “And I think you understand better than anyone else that when he latches onto someone, he won’t kill that person, but he will come for those around them, so I can’t have anyone around me right now.”

With some consternation, he asked, “Why would he come for you now?”

“He may not come for me tonight or tomorrow, but soon enough that I need to go now.”

I hadn’t answered his question, so he asked another way. “What did you do?”

Oh come on. Some part of him had to know, didn’t it? “How’s Alice liking this town? I bet it quiets the voices in her head . . . vampire and human alike.” He looked confused at my total change in subject. That’s good. All I’d needed was some time to figure out what to do, and Klaus’s call had given me that. I wanted him thinking about something else when I eased him into how badly I’d screwed them over. “One of the first things I learned about vampires is that if you're not on vervain, then vampires can do more than compel you. They can interfere with dreams and put thoughts in your head. They can also read your thoughts if they’re touching you . . . I've never heard of a vampire being able to read thoughts long distance, but it would appear that there's at least one who can.”

“What are you – “

“Sage . . . I met her. She’s clever – way too clever to let slip what she was _thinking_ when she found out why you wanted that ledger. She would’ve waited until she got what she wanted and then let you know what she was thinking, because she’s 900 years old and must almost always be the oldest vampire in the room, or she would’ve sabotaged your efforts before letting you know why, and yet Alice had a pretty strong reaction to her. She wasn’t even in the room, but she knew . . . Unlike you and Damon, or the rest of this town, I’m guessing Sage, isn’t on vervain.” My eyes flicked to the hall behind him as I said, “Maybe Alice was as much a prisoner of that house as her husband was, but for entirely different reasons. It’s a lot quieter when there’s only one other person, especially if that person is on vervain.” 

When I looked at him again, I added, “Maybe you knew that. Maybe you didn’t . . . If you did, then I’m guessing there was a plan underway to swap out my vervain, so she could take a crack at finding out what I saw in that ledger.” I tried not to smile when I saw Alice step into view behind Stefan. Now all that was left was Elena, and they should all be right where I wanted them to be. I tutted before saying, “That’s not very nice. Just thinking that way makes you as bad as Klaus.” Stefan looked momentarily chastised, and I said, “Or it would have if the plan hadn’t changed when you found something in the archives . . . a picture . . . something with a caption that said where that white oak was used . . . maybe Damon got there in time. Maybe he didn’t, but the white oak used for the Wickery Bridge is gone now, or I think it is. I think that’s what that call from Klaus was about.”

There she was, my pesky sister. I started slipping on my leather gloves as she said, “You told Sage where it was,” like it’d only just occurred to her that's what I'd done. “You knew what she would do, and – “

“Imagine this if you can. You come home from school to find a dead woman on the floor. She wakes up and is a 900 year old vampire who starts threatening people you care about . . . do you tell her? Do you not tell her?” One of my eyebrows arched, because we both know what she would’ve done. It made her a little angry.

“She didn’t scare you. Nothing scares you! And you didn’t tell anyone! You had time to stop her, and – “

“Well, you were there when she was leaving, and then they came home, but Klaus called, so even if I did want to stop her, was there really time?”

“You’re just like Katherine! Every time I think you’re different, you go and do something to prove how much like her you really – “

Stefan, interrupted her by saying, “She’s not like Katherine.” He tossed a look down at Elena over his shoulder and said, “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t use Katherine’s mannerisms sometimes to throw people off, but she only does it with people who know Katherine. It’s a ploy to mask what she’s really doing.”

“But isn’t that the same thing?”

He shook his head. “No, Katherine does what’s best for Katherine. She never considers anyone else, and I didn't want to hear it for the longest time, but Damon’s right when he says that Eve treats hunting, like she’s this invisible wall that protects both sides. It doesn’t matter if it’s vampires against humans or werewolves against vampires or us against Klaus. It’s only when one side gets out of hand that she steps in and either tries to stop something she sees as bad from happening or seeks justice for something that’s already happened. She’s doing the same thing now with Klaus. She’ll try stop us from killing him if she thinks it’s wrong, but she’s not going to give him a free pass to do whatever he wants either. That’s why there are no hybrids around town to do his bidding. It deescalates the situation, just like us not having a weapon that can kill him deescalates it.” 

I wasn’t exactly doing this for entirely altruistic reasons. I didn’t want Damon to die. I didn’t want that for him. I didn’t want that for me. That meant that I was doing this for myself every bit as much as Katherine did when she only did things for herself, but his ideas on where I stood when it came to hunting and on this fiasco with Klaus were also sort of right, and I warmed at the thought of Damon making him understand all of that, or I did until Stefan looked at me and said, “But Klaus won’t understand that. He’ll wonder what I am . . . Did you get to the Wickery Bridge first, Eve?”

“I was at school all day.” I tilted my head in Elena’s direction before adding, “She’s my alibi.”

Now if Damon was here, he’d say, ‘That wasn’t a no,’ because he knew me well enough to know that what I didn’t say was even more important than what I did say, but he wasn’t here, and Elena’s shoulders dropped as she looked up at Stefan. “She’s right. I’ve been trying to talk to her all day. She even went to practice after school. She wouldn’t have had time.”

Stefan’s eyes narrowed as he thought about it, but Alice is the one who said, “There’s more to her than meets the eye. She must have something, or she wouldn’t think she has a way to make him follow the rules.” 

Well, I wasn’t the only one who was more than I seemed. She was a treasure trove of special abilities, possibly because of her witch background, or her age. She could easily do what I did in keeping people, vampires, or whoever needed it, safe, and she could do it with much less effort if she cared to do it. Instead, she fell in love with a real monster and helped him orchestrate an abysmal human rights record. I suppose Damon was a monster too, but he didn’t make me worse. He tried to help me be better, and to do that, he needed to be better, so I made him better too. 

If Alice hadn’t met her husband, or if I hadn’t killed him, then she may not be as much of a wild card in our midst. We might even be friends, but as it was, I didn’t trust her. I knew her better than Sage, but at least my interests aligned with Sage’s at this point in time, and as long as they did, then Sage and I could work together to achieve the same goal. Alice wasn’t on my side in the slightest. She was mostly trying to figure me out, the way I was her.

Now what to do about getting out of here. They weren’t going to just let me walk out the front door if they thought I had or knew where more white oak might be, and I really didn’t want to start my disappearance bloody. It’d completely ruin what I had planned. They were in the hall. I was in here. It’d take them a second to figure out what I was doing once I set this in motion. Elena could come in here to try and stop me, but the other two would have to make it to the front door and around to the back of the house, because they weren’t invited into my room. Sure, one of them might just go around to one of the rooms next to this one, but then they’d have to smash their way out of the windows in those rooms, and that might actually slow them down a few seconds. If they went with that option, I’d have 5 seconds. If they went to the front door, then I think Stefan would make it there in 5 seconds. Alice would probably make it in 3. It’d be another 4 seconds before Alice got to the back window by my bedroom, and maybe 9 before Stefan did, but I didn’t want them to get out the front door. 

One second to close the door and lock it, so Elena couldn’t get in here. One second to get to the window. Half a second to get out the window if I hopped out of it the way I had the fence at practice earlier. Two seconds to get to the water tap that Damon knew about, and they didn’t. Back when vervain was first put in the town’s water supply, and not long after Rebekah moved in here, Damon had taken my fire hose idea and ran with it by having the outside sprinkler system hooked up to the mains, so it wasn’t filtered, and I’m fairly certain he’d updated them to give them a little more of a kick in the event we were under attack from hybrids, but it’d work to keep any vampires in the house too, which is what I needed now. 

At 4 ½ seconds, I’d get to that tap before anyone could get to me, but I didn’t want anyone caught outside when those sprinklers started. They might get hurt more than if they tried to leave and quickly retreated back into the house once they felt the vervain in the water, or they might just power on past the sprinklers if they were already in the middle of them, which would mean that I’d have a more difficult time getting away. Because of her speed, Alice was a challenge. I could dart her with vervain, but I’d already done enough to her for now, and if I caught them off guard, I might be able to gain an additional second before she got to that front door, which should give me plenty of time for the sprinklers to turn on and keep her inside once she figured out what was in the water. It'd be several minutes before Elena got outside and found the tap to shut it all off. By then, I'd be gone. I lifted the strap of my bag over my shoulder in preparation for my departure, and Stefan quickly started, “Wait, you can’t leave. If you have something we can use, then – “

I stopped him by saying, “And that is why I’m not all that upset to go. I’m sick of you people trying to use me . . . Tell Damon, I won’t be far,” as my hand went to rest casually on the door.

Elena sniped, “Tell him yourself.”

I threw her a glare before showing her my phone and tossing it back onto my bed. “Would that I could, but I’m leaving my phone.” Looking up at Stefan, I added, “Make sure Klaus knows I’ve left it.” 

If Klaus suspected that I had something that could kill him, but didn’t think he had a way to get in touch with me, then he should put almost all of his focus on trying to get he and his siblings unlinked. That was a priority, because his mother was out there somewhere, and I had no idea if Damon got to that bridge before the wood on it was destroyed. The concern I had was that Klaus might think I told someone where I was going, which meant he might try to torture it out of people even if they didn’t know, but it wasn’t a risky play I was making. He was going to do that anyway to try and force my hand. Even if I handed over everything I had to him, he’d still wonder if there was more, so this is the only play I had if I wanted the element of surprise when Klaus eventually boiled over. 

Luckily, I’d recently been on a hunt, so me ‘leaving town,’ wasn’t out of the ordinary. That should buy me about a day, and me not having a phone that he could use to contact me should buy me another, but he’d eventually figure out that just because I didn’t have my phone, it didn’t mean I wasn’t keeping an eye on things. That’s when he’d make his move, and by then, I’d be ready to respond.

Stefan snorted. “If you think Damon is just going to let you disappear – “

It was time to take a page out of Caroline’s play book. It’s not one I'd ever used, but it might come in useful here. In faux-disgust, I interrupted him. “Let me? What’s that supposed to mean? I'll tell you what that means. It means your age is showing, Stefan. Let me . . . Like I’m not a fully-grown woman who can make my mind up on things? I’ll have you know that women today can make their own minds up on things. In fact, I’ve been making my own decisions for years, so - ”

“No, he won’t let you go and – “

“There it is again. Let me?!”

“No, no, no, what I mean is he won’t keep a level head if - “

I unexpectedly slammed the door shut, locked it, and sprinted for the window. Hm. Might’ve bought myself almost two full seconds with that one.


	67. Moving the Pieces into Place

I heard the keys in the door and stayed seated on the couch, while I waited in the dark. 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1. On flipped the lights, Matt cried out with a little jump, and his hand immediately shot out to grab at nothing behind the door. I twisted my hand, so he could see the baseball bat I was holding and asked, “Looking for this?”

That’s when he got a good enough look at me to register what he was seeing. “Eve?!! What the hell are you doing here?”

“Thought I’d give this whole vacation thing another try.”

He couldn't wrap his head around the fact that I was even here, let alone what I really meant. “Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Never mind . . . I need a place to stay.” Glancing at the bat, I thought about how best to approach this. There was method to my madness of being here, but it was a little hard to explain. I wasn’t sure that my reasoning would sell him on the idea I’d had, and it’s one I had to sell.

I’d had a few different ways I could go when I left the boarding house. I could’ve circled back around after everyone gave up trying to look for me, and maybe I could’ve hidden under my bed until Klaus ultimately made his move, but there were obvious issues with that. Sure, I’d managed to stay there for months without Stefan knowing, but Alice was there now too, and I couldn’t keep my presence a secret from Damon. 

I could’ve found an abandoned or foreclosed house in the town, so I could stay close enough to know what was going on in Mystic Falls. That would’ve given me more freedom, but Klaus would have anyone he had working for him check in those places first. 

I could’ve hidden out in Elena’s attic, but finding a way around both the witch and hunter who lived there wouldn’t have been easy, and I hadn’t packed any food before I left. I also hadn’t wanted to leave a trail of where I was going by stocking up at any shops along the way, so getting out of the attic and back into it to keep from starving to death would increase my risk of being discovered every time I did it. 

I could’ve lived with a random person at school, but a random person at school wouldn’t be good for intel, especially if they didn’t know I was there. Plus, the idea of me living there in the shadows of another student's house was pretty creepy. It made me decide if I was going to live anywhere, it needed to be with someone who knew I was there. 

That left Bonnie and Matt, really the last two people on the face of the planet that I would go to for anything. Bonnie was the last person I would go to for anything, and strangely enough, that meant that Klaus might think that I’d gone to her. She also had a Dad, told Elena and Caroline everything, didn’t like me any more than I liked her, and there was a good possibility that we might kill one another. I don’t think Matt even registered on Klaus’ radar, so that really left him. Plus, he might be on one of the outer rings of trust concerning all the supernatural threats in this town, but he was an outer ring for a reason. Nothing got past him. He could keep a secret. “I need a place to lay low for a while, and this seemed like the best place to do it.”

“Well, were you going to ask, or did you just assume you could stay?”

I muttered, “Fair enough,” before standing and said, “Mind if I stay here for a while?”

Turning away from me with his hands on top his head, like he was still trying to wrangle in his racing heart rate, he blurted out, “Yes, I mind,” but I wasn’t really fazed by it. He hadn’t backed away from me in fear when I got up, and he was then willing to turn his back on me. Both seemed like good signs to me. 

When he turned back around, I spotted his bandaged hand, “You need extra security around here.” I’d heard how it got broken. Kol did it at the ball. Why, I don’t know. Probably for kicks. “That’s why I don’t shake hands by the way . . . safety over decorum, I guess.” He didn’t say anything, and I thought about saying it slower or replacing the word decorum with manners, but decided that while he might not be as bright as some, he wasn’t an idiot, and I would have to be one to insult him and still expect him to do something for me. “Consider me extra security.” His brow furrowed in confusion, and he opened his mouth, still unsure of what he was going to say, so looking at the bat, I added, “I mean you don’t have to invite vampires in here for them to be able to get you. All they have to do is throw something in here through the window or door that would take your head off or tear the house down around you or compel someone to come in here and attack you, and this bat isn’t going to do much good in any of those instances.” I looked up at him. “You need me here . . . especially with what’s going on right now.”

“What’s going on?” Well, if he didn’t know now, I was sure his friends would tell him by tomorrow. 

Turning away from him, and absentmindedly twirling the bat in my hand, I said, “Well, there might be something out there that could kill Klaus . . . Maybe the others got to it in time. Maybe they didn’t, but he thinks I have it, so that makes anyone he knows I’m close to a target . . . You and I aren’t close, so you should be safe, but you are close to Elena, and you’re also alone, which could make you a target. I think we both know my sister wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, and here I am.”

He paused for a moment, and then unexpectedly exhaled a laugh. “You don’t really think I’ll be a target . . . so why are you really here?” 

Hm. I thought I sold that pretty well. Considering everything I’d said was true, it should have worked. Maybe not. I was good with monsters, but my interpersonal skills appeared to be seriously lacking with humans. Maybe it’s because when I dealt with monsters, I was conscious of the fact that they could hear my heartbeat, so I was careful not to betray what I was feeling, which meant no lying. It gave me license to use the truth to my benefit, because using the truth meant that I wasn’t going to give away any tell tale signs of lying by saying it, but with humans, my behavior just seemed odd? Or maybe I was just used to dealing with monsters . . . maybe I was a monster in my own way, so we were on a similar wavelength? Maybe it wasn’t just my sister who threw me off my game. Maybe it was all of them? Hm. I was one of them, but most of the time, I didn’t really feel like a human. I guess it fit with my place in the world - somewhere in the middle of all these fights – between the supernatural and humans or Klaus and every other supernatural creature in this town – whatever the fight was, I seemed to be in the middle of it, and that was a pretty lonely place to be sometimes. 

I pondered these things briefly, but they were really just a distraction that could be thought about after I’d found a way around my current obstacle. I could just knock him out and take his house, but I really needed him out there living his life like normal. How was I supposed to hide my whereabouts and get the information I needed if he didn’t? Slowly twirling my bat, I hit him with a little more truth to see if that would work. “Well, if you’re not even on his list, then you should be at the top of mine. He won’t hurt me, so it’s not me that I’m worried about right now.” 

Before he could say anything, I turned away from him again saying, “And you’re right . . . It isn’t you either. If he doesn’t see me and thinks I’m occupied, however briefly, by something else, then it’ll take him a day or two to work himself up to a point where he feels compelled to do something to get my attention. He’s going to want to try and force me to give him something he thinks I have. He can’t see me coming when he does. Because he is who he is, the only move I have is to catch him by surprise, and to do that, I need to disappear, wait for him to make his move, and then make mine.” When I turned to look at Matt, he seemed to be listening, so I said, “This is the disappearing part . . . nobody, including me, and from the looks of it, you, would expect me to hide out here . . . As long as you keep your mouth shut about it, then everything should be fine, and we’ll all walk out of this alive.” 

I was fairly confident I could do this so long as I had the element of surprise on my side, but if that went out the window, then nothing I did would work. If Klaus had time to put one or more people on my tail, whether paid or compelled, then they’d do the job of letting him know my every move, which meant he’d be able to easily outmaneuver anything I had planned. He was smart, experienced, and he thought 10 steps ahead. The only way to beat him was to not play his game. He couldn’t even see the board to know what game he was playing. I think I was sort of succeeding in my argument, and to lock it in, I reached into my pocket, pulled out 750 dollars and tossed in on the couch saying, “Consider that room and board. It should cover any expenses of me being here. I won’t be here more than a few days, a week at most.”

Matt looked at the money, and then immediately got annoyed. So much for not insulting him. “You think you can just buy me off? I’m not – “

“No, what I think is that that money is what’s left out of the money he gave me for making me be his driver for a month. I don’t want it. That’s why I left it in the bottom of my weapons bag. I used it for food, but when it came to paying for a place to stay, he always insisted on staying in the most luxurious of places, which usually meant him either compelling people out of their mansions or vastly over paying concierges into letting us have the penthouse suites. What better use for it than to use it against him now?”

He settled back down and looked at the money again. “It’s too much.”

“Is it?” Looking around the room, I said, “How many hours do you have to work just to pay the mortgage on this place? I mean your parents probably got it back when you were still a little kid, so the rates are probably pretty low, but it’s all on you now. Food’s not an issue, since you eat at school and get your dinners for free at the Bar & Grill. Gas and electric . . . you’re never home, so that’s probably pretty low too.” Looking at his hand I said, “But how much was that to fix? Probably 10x what I gave you if you don’t have insurance.” Taking in how uncomfortable he suddenly looked, I thought about it. He didn’t really need me to say that his parents were too irresponsible to have plans for themselves let alone any that included him. I softened the blow just a little. “Which you don’t. All your money is going into just surviving . . . Use it to pay for at least the first few repayments in good conscience, since it’s coming from the brother of the guy who did that to you and the girl who let said brother out of his coffin.” My attention shifted away from him as I looked around the room again and shook my head. “You shouldn’t even be a part of any of this anyway . . . It isn’t right.”

“I don’t need your pity. You know what? You can keep your - “

I quickly cut him off. “I could throw in free tutoring sessions on your homework as long as I’m here.” Seeing that my last ditch offer hadn’t worked, I exhaled a brief sigh. “No? Well, how about this? If you want me to leave, then you’re going to have to force me to go, and if you try, I’ll do far worse to you than Kol did . . . put you in the hospital long enough that it’ll all be over by the time you get out.” Hm. That idea was really starting to appeal to me more despite the obvious pitfalls that were associated with it. There were some positives to it too. “It’ll cost you a hell of a lot more than a broken hand, but it’d keep you out of my way and make sure you don’t accidentally tell anyone I’m here . . . I won’t be as in the loop on what’s going on around here,” With a shrug, I tightened my hold on the handle of the bat and swung it over my shoulder. “But I’ll figure out a way around that.”

Eyes wide, he brought his good hand up to stave off an imminent attack. “Wait!” 

Relaxing just a tad, I rested the bat on my shoulder. “Have a change of heart?”

“All right. Fine. You can stay!”

“And you won’t tell anyone I’m here?”

“No!”

“You’ll find a way to slip my homework into all my classes without anyone seeing you?”

“What?” I tightened my grip on the bat, and he quickly said, “Yes!”

"I'll take the couch, and you keep your room?"

"Fine!"

I relaxed again. “And you’ll take the money?” It really was at least partially my fault his hand had been broken. I should’ve done more research on Kol instead of spontaneously deciding to release him – not that Elijah or even Klaus himself wouldn’t have done the same – the point was they hadn’t had the opportunity to do it, because I already did it. Well, that, and I really needed to get my thoughts on handshaking out there more to this group of people. Maybe if I had, then Matt wouldn’t have a broken hand right now. Plus, I didn’t want that money. Might as well go to a good cause rather than waste away inside my bag.

His shoulder’s dropped before he went over to the couch and looked down at the money, like it was a dying kitten. There was pride, but pride usually came before a fall, didn’t it? If it helped, I said, “Use it to buy me groceries . . . You never know. I might eat a lot.”

He picked up the notes and grumbled as he put them in his pocket. “Not if you’re anything like your sister.”

Dropping the bat to my side, I responded, “I think we both know I’m not,” and he exhaled a tired laugh before sitting on the couch.

I sat next to him, and he was staring at the floor. With a shake of his head, he said, “You wouldn’t have done it.”

Was that supposed to be question? It seemed like it. The way he looked at me when I didn’t immediately respond seemed to suggest it had been. With a straight face, I answered, “You tell me.”

He studied me before looking down again. After a moment or two, he shook his head again. “I don’t know.”

“You do.” That got his attention. “Your instincts told you what to say for a reason.”

He didn’t like that. “No, that’s what you want me to think, because you like the idea of people being scared of you, but human beings are basically good. You wouldn’t have beaten me bad enough to put me in the hospital, just so you could steal my house for a couple of days.”

“You have a lot to learn about people . . . . and monsters. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but to win the bigger fight?” I slumped against the back of the couch, “Who knows?”

Matt looked back at me over his shoulder. “You mean you don’t?”

I shrugged a shoulder. “Probably would’ve given away where I was if you mysteriously ended up in the hospital, so I probably would’ve had to find a different place anyway.”

“Nothing to do with it being just plain wrong.”

He was teasing me now, but I remained stoic. “Strategically? Yes. Morally? I’m not so sure.”

He grinned. “I think you know.”

I rolled my eyes. I’m pretty sure I would have, and I’m fairly certain there was a part of him that thought I would have too, or he wouldn’t have backed down, but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was whether or not he said anything to anyone, and he had to believe that he couldn’t, or there would be consequences. “Just so you know . . . I won’t use the lights if you’re not here. It’d stand out if they were on when nobody is supposed to be home . . . so that cost won’t be any more than if you were here alone. Just don’t be surprised if you come home and find me sitting in the dark.”

His smile faltered somewhat. “Why do you keep bringing up my finances?”

“Because I want to leave as small of a footprint on your life as possible . . . So long as you keep our deal, then I will.” Glancing around the room again to look for more weak spots in the defenses of this place, I added, “And as long as I’m here, nothing will happen to you . . . I can assure you of that.” 

I paused to look at the bat and he sat back next to me before saying, “You really think Klaus is going to go after someone you care about?” Leave it to Matt not to have his first question be if I even had the thing that could kill Klaus. Of course his first concern would be who might get hurt. I nodded, and he asked, “Who do you think it’ll be?”

It wouldn’t be Elena. Klaus needed her blood. He could hurt her, but there’s only so much that he could hurt her before she died, so he’d only take her as a last resort. If I was Elena, then it’d be Jeremy, but I wasn’t Elena. He’d want someone who could heal anyway . . . someone who he could inflict the maximum amount of damage on to create the biggest impact. It wouldn’t be Caroline. I think Klaus may have a bit of crush on her, and if he took her and tortured her to get at me, then that would absolutely ruin any chance he thought he might have with her. It wouldn’t be Stefan, because despite everything, he still considered Stefan a friend, and he knew I wasn’t all that fond of Stefan most of the time anyway. Given what was becoming noticeable to multiple people, that really only left one person, and I had to be prepared to step in at that eventuality, even if it meant inexplicably disappearing for a few days and letting it happen, so I could. “Damon . . . He’s going to go after Damon.” 

Did that mean the weapons I had that could be used to kill an Original were more important than Damon? No. It meant that Klaus was paranoid enough to never believe I gave him everything I had even if I did, so nobody would be safe until I made a big enough statement that he would believe me. It also meant not telling Damon where I was or what I was doing, and the point Stefan had been trying to make before I ditched him was right. Damon had severe abandonment issues. This would without a doubt upset him, but if it meant he was alive to be angry with me, then I could live with that. I mean he said something like that to me once, and he'd understood when I shot him and took off with Klaus. Hopefully, he'd understand this time too, but maybe he wouldn't. I guess time would tell.


	68. Winning Friends and Influencing People

The door shut as Matt hit the light switch. I flicked off the penlight I was using, pulled the sleeping bag off my head, and looked in Matt’s direction. He walked right on past me on his way to the kitchen muttering, “Do you have any idea how weird is it for me come home at night and find you sitting on my couch, like some kind of a ghost?”

Someone was sadly misinformed. I mean I saw my Mom as a ghost and at no point did she have a blanket over her head. Getting up from my seat to follow him, so I could see what kind of food he’d brought, I responded by having a conversation with myself. “’Hi, Eve. How was your day?’ Oh you know, it was pretty quiet, but I’m pretty sure I have my history presentation done. Did anyone notice what you took from the chemistry lab, or was it fine, the way I said it would be? ‘It was fine.’ Oh that’s good. Did you hand in my homework for my other classes without anyone seeing you? Do people still think I’m handing it myself, like a ninja, or are they starting to suspect it’s someone else?’”

I placed my palms on his kitchen table, and he slid me a box of food from the Mystic Grill in my direction before saying, “And that’s another thing. Stop correcting my algebra homework after I go to bed at night. I got it back today thinking I actually got an A only to see that half the answers were erased and replaced with different handwriting. That’s a good way to get caught, and I thought you didn't want anybody to know you’re here.”

And here I’d thought that I’d showed pretty strong restraint in only fixing his math homework. Some of his essays and longer answers on his other homework were either blank or simply atrocious, but I figured that different handwriting wouldn’t be as noticeable with numbers. Besides, I wouldn’t have had to fix his homework at all if he’d just taken me up on my offer to tutor him. I’d thought that maybe he turned me down because his life outside this house was pretty busy, and he didn’t place his school work above his free time in his list of priorities. His priorities were his own business, but none of that meant that he wanted to get the wrong answers, did it? It just meant that he didn’t want to put the work in to make them better. 

Well, I wouldn’t fix anything tonight if it’s what he was explicitly saying, but he was going to be awfully disappointed in whatever grade he got the day after tomorrow. I opened the box and picked at some of the cold fries, while saying, “You didn’t answer my question.” 

Throwing his good hand up in frustration, while he turned toward the fridge, Matt said, “If by ninja, you mean that they think you’re somehow slipping into and out of the school without any of them knowing, then yeah . . . You know you told me this wouldn’t require me lying, and it seems like that’s all I’m doing.”

“How so? Just don’t say anything, and you’ll be fine.”

Grabbing himself a soda, Matt said, “And when they ask me if I’ve seen you? What am I supposed to say?”

I have no idea why they would specifically ask him that. I shrugged, while tentatively trying the chicken wing. “Have they?”

“No, but that’s not the point!”

Wow, he really didn’t do roommates, did he? It’d only been a couple of days, and he seemed to get crankier and crankier with each passing day. “The truth . . . that you haven’t seen me at school.”

He relaxed briefly before leaning back against the counter with a sigh. “You say it’s the truth, but it still feels like lying.” 

“Well, it’s not.”

Opening the tab on his can, he shook his head. “You know this is way too easy for you . . . I’m the one who has to hear them come up with all these ideas on where they think you might be when I know that you’re here.” He went to take a drink and said, “You said it wouldn’t be very long.”

“I said a few days, a week tops, and it hasn’t been a week. It hasn’t even been a few days. It’s been two.” 

I didn’t have to add, ‘drama queen,’ at the end for him to get that’s in the ballpark of what I was thinking. His eyes narrowed as he pushed himself off the counter saying, “Forget I said anything. I’m going to bed. See you in the morning.”

Following him out of the room with my cold food, I tried, “Will I? You left awfully early this morning.” He immediately stopped without out turning around to look at me. Huh, there might be something to that. If he had his own secrets, then so be it. It’s just that if he was keeping secrets from me about something I should know, that could be a problem. A good part of the reason I was staying with him was to get pertinent information from him. “Early morning practice?”

“Uh . . . yeah.” Turning to look at me with a smile, he said, “Not really much I can do with my hand, but I still have to be there to support the team. You know how it is.” 

Yeah, it was supposed to be the same with cheerleading. If you were in school, then you had to be there for practice, but practice that early in the morning? No amount of early practice would help that football team this late in the season, and it’s something that would’ve had to start this week, because they hadn’t done it the rest of the season. Also, that was a pretty fast turn around from the way his attitude had been just a minute ago. Why the smile? My eyes narrowed briefly before I turned to go sit on the couch saying, “Wouldn’t worry about that ability to lie, Matthew . . . Looks like it comes easily enough when you want it to.” 

He exhaled a derisive snort as he rolled his eyes and turned to go to his room. “Whatever. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Yeah, he was definitely hiding something. If he wasn’t lying, wouldn’t a straight arrow like him have been more outraged? I stopped him again by saying, “You know that if what’s got you in a mood is being in the middle . . . keeping my secret from friends you’ve known your whole life and keeping things you don’t think they’d want me to know from me . . . I get it.” This time when he looked back at me, it was with a little less strain. “But I think you’re over-thinking this. I only want to know if someone is in trouble, Klaus included.”

“See that’s just it. Why are you so set on protecting him? You know what he’s done. You know what he’s planning to do with Elena, and the only reason you’re even here right now is because you’re sure he’s going to go after someone you care about. He needs to be stopped. Why won’t you help us do that?”

“Stopped, or killed? Because I think I’ve been fairly consistent in saying that if we came up with another way to deal with him that didn’t involve killing him, I’d be on board with that.”

Judging from his slightly confused look, I think it’s safe to say that bit of information hadn’t quite reached this far. Obviously, that surprised me a little, or I wouldn’t have said it expecting him to know what I meant, but I guess it also made sense. People who knew what I’d said weren’t going to waste their time explaining it to him when they didn’t agree with me, and when everyone else was all kill, kill, kill, all of the time, it didn’t leave much room for their discussion to include alternative methods of dealing with Klaus. That left Matt to come up with his own conclusions on things, and I’m not sure that anyone was imaginative enough to conjure up that I didn’t want to kill Klaus, because it might kill Damon too. Come to think of it, now I wasn’t even sure that my reasoning for my position had even made it this far, but even if it had, I knew Matt couldn’t possibly like Damon. Damon had killed Matt’s sister, turned her into a monster that needed to be killed, and as a result, she was now dead more permanently, so protecting Damon wasn’t a good enough reason for Matt not to kill Klaus. All Matt really cared about was protecting his own friends, so how could I approach this in a way that would make sense to him? 

Putting the box next to me, so I could rest my elbows on my knees, I leaned forward and said, “I couldn’t help but notice your hunting rifle, so I’m guessing you’ve gone after deer. I’m not sure how successful you’ve been with that, so maybe you can kill, but have you ever killed a person?” 

He paused before slowly making his way back into the room. I was taking that as a ‘no’. “Well, it’s an entirely different experience . . . What you have to decide is if vampires or werewolves are people even if they’re not human. Think of Caroline and Tyler . . . Are they people?” 

Matt's face relaxed as he sat on the arm of a nearby chair. He knew where I was heading with this, and he was still listening, so I said, “I think we both know they are. They have hopes and dreams and plans for the future just like anyone else. They have faults and try for redemption. They have people they love and who love them . . . every monster does, and that includes Klaus . . . It includes his siblings too by the way. I’m assuming that whatever plans you all have to kill Klaus still include killing one of them, but that's wrong. Like what’d Finn ever do to any of you? What’s he ever done to anyone for that matter? He’s been alive 1000 years, but he’s spent over 900 of those years in a box.” 

Matt’s eyes darted toward the floor briefly, and he didn’t have to say it for me to know that must be the plan. Either Damon got to the Wickery Bridge in time, or he found something else, but they had something they could use to kill an Original. In a round about way, Matt just gave me the information by body language alone even though he hadn't wanted to say anything. Well, I couldn’t fight a war on two fronts. Sometimes you have to delegate, and Klaus had said to leave his family situation to him, so that’s what I was going to have to do for now if it meant saving Damon from both Klaus and himself.

Eventually Matt said, “But if they’re really just people, then how can you kill them?”

“Because I have a different code of ethics . . . For instance, the thought of you using that rifle to hunt deer makes me want to melt it down, so you can’t. Stefan sticking to a rabbit diet, so he can kill something instead of learning to control any blood lust he might get from a lifeless bag of human blood, doesn’t make him a paragon of virtue in my books, and under the right set of circumstances, there’s no real way to know if my ‘don’t kill humans’ policy will hold firm, or if it’s just a nice idea, because I’ve certainly put at least one human in a hospital without thinking much of it . . . I’m merely pointing out how someone like you should feel about it. There should be some serious soul searching for you to determine if that’s the kind of person you are . . . if it’s something you can do without any kind of conscience . . . I can, and even I have days where I question something I’ve done . . . most of the time I don’t, but sometimes I do . . . You should be questioning it all the time if you’re thinking about killing someone; before, during, and after if you go through with it.” 

Picking up my box of food, I said, “I mean has anyone seriously given any consideration to finding another way? Maybe, but until every option at killing him has been exhausted, nobody will say it, and that’s a problem, because by the time anyone does, it might be too late to stop something even worse from happening.” 

Poking at my food with some annoyance, I added, “It’s ridiculous really . . . You and Elena and Jeremy and Bonnie . . . you’re all a bunch of kids. It’s like _Lord of the Flies_ around here with how much y’all conspire to murder, and that’s exactly what it is if you’re not taking a direct shot at Klaus yourselves. The plan to use his father as a distraction, so you could work together to kill Klaus was good. Getting his mother out of monster purgatory to do the job for you wasn’t. Killing his brother to kill him isn’t . . . If he’s you’re target, then make him your target. It’s messy when you get others involved to do your dirty work for you or to act as a surrogate for him when he’s your real target, and it’s cowardly. If I was going after him, you can bet that I’d confront him myself. Is that smart? I don’t know, but at least it’s clean.”

Slinking down into the chair, Matt thought about how to respond before giving a slow grin. “You know you’re our age, right?”

“Yeah, well, I’m an old soul.” 

“And cranky.”

I did a double take of his grin and quickly said, “Me?! You’re the one who came in here acting like a bear. If you’re upset about something, then say it. Don’t bottle it up and be a jerk about it.” 

He exhaled a laugh and reclined back more comfortably as he said, “All right, fine . . . Then can I ask you something?”

I plucked another fry from the box. “Go for it.”

“You think that Klaus is going to come after you, because he thinks you have something that can kill him . . .” 

So far so good. I ate my fry and looked up at him. “Hmhmm.”

“Do you?” 

I’d been here for two whole days, and he was only now asking me? I rolled my eyes and went back to my dinner. “You can search my stuff. You won’t find anything.”

Crossing his hands over his stomach, Matt looked up to the ceiling and thought about it. “That’s not really a no.”

I think I finally had this figured out. Matt seeing through my misdirection had less to do with me failing at social interactions and more to do with Matt. Damon would’ve gotten that omission because he’d learned his lesson with me and was deceitful himself. Stefan, when he wasn’t a ripper, wanted to believe in the good in people, so he might catch things like that, but he’d give a person the benefit of the doubt unless it was Damon. Elena, Caroline, and Tyler didn’t usually pick up on it, although Caroline was getting better, and here was innocent Matt getting it fairly easily. 

Bet he could thank his Mom for that little skill. When you grow up around liars and people who withhold information from you, then you’re probably better than most at sussing out something that doesn’t sound quite right. To deal with it, I turned the tables on him. “I find it curious that anyone other than Klaus would even care if I do, considering you guys have something up your own sleeves . . . My guess is that me disappearing is working out pretty well for you guys, since it means that Klaus isn’t as fixated on you. It gives you free reign to concoct all kinds of conspiracies for his downfall.”

Sitting up with some indignation, Matt cracked better than I’d intended. “All right, I’ve gotta know. Were you following me?!”

I exhaled a laugh at finally some kind of confirmation on my suspicions. Looking back down at my sad dinner, I shook my head. “Nope.” Just pushed and prodded enough that he told me what I wanted. Now I was wondering if me staying here had been the best of ideas. That'd been a little too easy.

“Then how do you do that?! How do know what people are thinking . . . or doing? What are you?”

“A high school senior?” I shrugged my shoulder, and he shook his head.

“No, I mean – “

“I know what you meant.”

“Well then, like, when those witches did whatever they did to you and Elena, did some of it rub off on you, or what?”

Well, that was a new one. A soft smile graced my face before I picked up another chicken wing and started tearing the meat off with my fingers. “Nah. I didn’t grow up around anyone but my parents . . . I mean if I went into a store, I saw people behind the counter, and that kind of thing, but real social interactions were limited to my parents. I suppose that means that I was hyper-focused on the only people I knew, and the only people I knew were schemers and often withheld a lot from me, particularly my Dad on hunts. It’s in my nature to want answers, which means I had to get good at connecting the dots when not all the dots were there to connect. Most things I got it right. Some big things I didn’t, and along the way, I got very good at reading vampires. They’re just enhanced people.”

He absorbed that and didn’t seem to find any fault with it. Then he changed the subject to one I was a little more excited to talk about with someone, really anyone at this point. “Did those things I got you work?”

“They sure did!” 

I threw him a grin and quickly got off the couch, so I could grab what I’d hidden in his kitchen. After washing my hands in the sink, I came back in holding my first contraption, and he was a little less impressed with it than I’d hoped. “Is the idea to burn his house down?”

I looked at the candle sitting at the bottom of the apparatus and shook my head. “No, the idea is to anchor it and hope it doesn’t get blown over. As long there isn’t a storm, it should be fine.”

I put the chemistry stand on the floor in front of him and got my lighter out of my pocket, so I could light the wicks of the candle before putting the pie tin over it, not low enough to cut off any oxygen from getting to the flames, but low enough for the pie tin to be heated by the flames. The upside down funnel I had in the tin was already taped in place, so no air could escape, and as I was about to pour in my glycerine, vervain, wolfsbane, and water mixture into the small round hole of the funnel at the top, he said, “I still don’t understand why you can’t just buy a fog machine.”

My shoulders dropped as I looked over at him. “Because most of them use an ultrasonic mist making device, which means that they will be heard by the monsters in the house who can hear in an ultrasonic range. This is silent.” With a shake of my head, I poured the mixture into the upside down funnel and then quickly secured a rubber chemistry hose to the end. A few seconds later, a thick fog began to make it’s way out the other end of the hose, and Matt stood to get a closer look. By the time he turned back to look at me with a little laugh, the visibility in the room had gotten a little murky, and a minute later, he couldn’t see me at all. I heard him laugh again as he tried to move closer and then heard him bump into something. “Okay, I get it . . . It’s not bad, Gilbert . . . You can turn it off now.” I blew out the candles, and the fog slowly began to dissipate out of the room. As he finally found his seat, Matt pointed to the fog and said, “What are you going to do if that happens?”

If I ran out of the mixture in the funnel, or the flames blew out and the fog started to waft out of the house? “Trade secrets . . . I disappeared for a reason. I need to be as ready as possible, so I will be.”

I started taking my apparatus apart, and Matt said, “You’re doing all of this for Damon?”

“Mmhmm.” I knew he was struggling with me being gone. Matt said he went after Caroline yesterday, because he was sure she knew where I was. That’s the big thing that Matt was annoyed with me about yesterday, but Caroline had been trained well. She wasn’t the same scared vampire she was when I met her, and she’d handled Damon’s challenge pretty well, not that she was any happier than he was at the way I’d disappeared. I guess if Matt had to hear even just those two getting more and more annoyed by my radio silence, then I could understand why he was annoyed with me today too. “Sorry you’re in the middle . . . I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

“But why him?”

Were we getting into this now? “Everyone needs saving from time to time.”

“Even him?”

“Especially him.” I flicked a look at Matt and added, “He’s the only family I have left.”

“You have Elena . . . and Jeremy.”

“They’re blood, and I’d do whatever needs to be done to protect them, but they’re not necessarily family . . . if you know what I mean.” 

I’m fairly certain that he did. His friends were his family, because the rest of his family were either out their doing their own thing or dead. He gave me a curt nod before looking at my fog machine and said, “It’s a big house . . . a lot bigger than this one. Are you only making one of those things?”

“No, I’ve got quite a few to get ready and test out to make sure they work.”

“Want some help?”

His question threw me for a loop. Did I want some help? Not particularly. It wasn’t a very difficult task, but people who worked on things together tended to get along better, didn’t they? If he wanted to help, I shouldn’t turn him down if it meant he and I might get along until tomorrow’s annoyances put him in a bad mood by the time he got back here. It’d certainly make him less likely to ‘out’ me if he didn’t hate me. “If you don’t mind.” 

“Not at all.” He crawled onto the floor to start figuring out how this fog machine had been put together, and I went to the kitchen to get the other supplies we’d need. 

It turned out to be a good decision on my part, because the effects from that evening lasted longer than just until the next night. He came back in a relatively better mood than he had either of the other two nights. I guess maybe he was more willing to shoulder the burden of keeping my secret after that, and it was a good lesson for the future. It’s definitely what facilitated the call I got on my burner phone almost a week to the day that I started staying there. _“Damon’s missing.”_


	69. Smoke and Mirrors

As soon as the words left Matt’s mouth, I started heading for my 'go bag' that I’d been assembling since before I got here. It’d grown. It was more like an old one of Matt’s hunting backpacks that he'd lent me, and even then, I had to meticulously pack it and re-pack to make sure everything that I needed fit. The result was that no matter the time of day, I was prepared, including now when it was broad daylight. “Since when?”

_“A few hours ago. Alice didn’t see what took him, but whatever it was knocked her out, and - "_

"Knocked her out how?" It was an important question to ask, because for all I knew, this could've been Damon being erratic or another hunter . . . anything except the one thing I was prepared to deal with right now, and if I went knocking on Klaus's door, then I wanted to be sure I had a reason to do it.

_"I don't know . . . something about her neck? All I know is that when she woke up, he was missing.”_

At that point, I was starting to slow down as I pulled my hand back from the bag holding a light grey pair of cargo pants. Either whoever took her had been snacking on the locals, making it possible for them to sneak up on her despite her ability to hear thoughts; it'd happened so fast that she hadn't had a chance to process that she heard any thoughts; or she was lying. “Are you sure she didn’t take him and say someone else did it?”

_“I’m just telling you what Elena said. She also said their place was a mess when she went there.”_

Signs of a struggle? If that was true, then one of the Originals could’ve gone to get him. Maybe her ability didn't work on them, but even if it did, then their speed could account for how she'd been blindsided. Would Klaus do it, or would he send one of his siblings? “What’s Stefan say?”

_“What?”_

“If they took his brother, then what’s he planning to do to get him back?”

Back came the ‘bear’ Matt, I’d almost forgotten. _“What do you want from me? I told you everything I know.”_

I muttered, “The truth would be nice considering the fact that I’m about to put my life on the line,” without really thinking about it as I changed out of my jeans and into the cargo pants that I’d had Matt get me out of the money I'd given him and that he refused to spend on himself. This had better not be because those dopes wanted me out of the way while they did whatever it was they were planning to do. I knew that the last thing that Damon would want is for me to was attack Klaus’s home, so there was a strong possibility this was legitimate, but maybe he didn’t know what his brother and my sister were planning. Matt was closer to them than Damon, so it wouldn't take much for them to convince him to call me when Damon wasn't around. I almost didn’t notice the silence on the other end of the line until I heard a soft sigh as I tied my hair up into a high pony tail on top of my head. 

_“You stayed with me for a reason, and it wasn’t just because you needed somewhere to go that he wouldn’t think to find you, right?”_

I was already wearing a white long-sleeved t-shirt, so I was good on that front. Now I needed something to cover it and add an extra layer. _Sorry leather jacket, but you’re out._ It wasn’t just that it’d make me stand out in a room full of white fog. It was that if this went badly, then I didn’t want something Damon had gotten me to be destroyed. I wanted something to remind me of him. My hand moved past the jacket and landed on a light grey hooded sweatshirt I’d also had Matt get me. “I did.”

 _“And it was for this reason, right?”_

Packing the bag with the clothes I’d been wearing, I mumbled, “It was.”

 _“Then trust me when I say that I'm not telling you because of anything anyone else is doing.”_ He sounded somewhat annoyed, and I wasn’t entirely sure why until he said, _“I just thought it was something you should know . . . in case anything Stefan may or may not be planning doesn’t work.”_

Stefan was going ahead with his plan to kill Klaus, and it appeared to annoy Matt for some reason. “It’s more about killing Klaus to him than getting his brother back, isn’t it?” I heard him exhale a slightly harsher sigh and added, “And he wants your help.”

_“Seriously how do you do that?”_

Maybe some of what I’d been saying to Matt all week about the morality of killing had sunken in just a bit. It didn’t quite sound like he was as up for this as he would have maybe otherwise been. Instead of answering his question, I said, “Tell him there's a perfectly good hunter he killed living with my sister, and that guy would love to help him out if it means killing a vampire."

_"He doesn't trust him . . . not sure I do either, if I'm honest."_

"You've met?"

_"No."_

"Then you don't know . . . You're just going based off of what you've heard . . . Look, if you’re going to do this, then make sure you commit. Don’t leave any room for doubt, or you and the others will die. The same goes for if you decide not to help . . . In or out, no in between, and if you’re ‘in,’ then get Stefan to heal your hand with his blood. How much time to do I have before that fool attempts to go after an Original?”

“Eve . . . “

“How. Much. Time?” It would appear that I may need to save Damon from Klaus and then from his brother.

“I don’t know . . . An hour? Hour and a half tops.”

I’d go with an hour then. “Thanks, Matt . . . I hope you fail, but good luck surviving.”

I heard him start to laugh and hung up before I could hear his response. If I only had an hour, then I didn’t have any time to waste.

It took me about 15 minutes to get to the Mikaelson’s house on foot. It took another 10 minutes to get onto the roof, because there were essentially 3 tiers, and all of them had to be checked for ventilation ducts. There’d been none on the first floor, and a couple on the second that I covered over with duct tape, but most of them wound up being on the roof of the third floor. 

After setting up a homemade fog machine at the first vent, I got to work taping the open end of the chemistry tube over the duct. When it was firmly in place, I duct taped over the rest of the hole to seal it and prevent the fog from escaping anywhere but inside the house. I did the same with the other vents. Then I had to tape over the chimneys to prevent them from leaking any fog out of them. If anyone inside the house wanted to break the windows, they could, and of course, they were more than welcome to leave the house and Damon unattended if they made it to the doors, but with the vervain and wolfsbane in the fog mixture, that would be difficult – not impossible, because there was at least one Original inside, but difficult even for an Original for sure. 

I got all the chimneys sealed, but two. There was in a fire in the fireplace at the bottom of both, and I didn’t want the smoke to start filling the room before the fog did. That’d just alert them that was something was amiss, and they’d come up here to check, see my whole set up, and then my plan would be ruined. With the windows and doors all shut and the other ways for air to get into the house now blocked, it wouldn’t be long before the oxygen these fires needed to only come from the chimney itself. I wasn’t an expert in fires, but I think that meant that with the fog replacing the air in the rooms, the fire at the bottom would grow upwards to get at the only oxygen source it could find. I didn’t want to set the house on fire with Klaus inside. It wouldn’t kill him, but there was making a point and then there was literally burning all your bridges. 

I couldn’t just put the fires out from up here, because again, if anyone was in that room when I did it, then they’d know that for that to have happened, whoever did it was on the roof. My plan would be ruined. If I left the fires to themselves, chances are that the flames wouldn’t get big enough to do any serious damage before I was down there and able to put the fire out myself, and they had to go out. They’d just burn off any fog that attempted to flee out of the chimney, and possibly heat the room enough that the fog wouldn’t fill the room at all. I couldn’t let that happen. 

Looking at what I’d brought, I grabbed a balloon and filled it with the liquid fog mixture, tied it at the end and then taped the end to an extra pie tin. I set the pie tin on one side of the opening to the chimney and the balloon on the other, so that both were propped up over the hole and made a little tripod. It allowed the smoke to keep leaving freely until I could get down there. Almost done.

I stood to go do the same to the last chimney left open, but stopped when I heard a pain-filled scream come roaring up from the depths of the room connected to this chimney. Hearing it made me feel a strange combination of emotions. For one, I was now certain that Matt had been telling me the truth about Damon being taken and about who had taken him, which made me relax. So did having a good idea of where they were keeping Damon, and instead of feeling worried or angry, it mostly flipped that human switch of mine that made me feel a sense of cold clarity on what I had to do. Looking at my watch, I also felt a little like I was running out of time. The final chimney could stay the way it was. Maybe it’d even work to pull more of the fog through the house faster if there was one source of ventilation still left open

After lighting the candles on all the fog machines, I made my way to the edge of the third story. Crouching down, I held onto the ledge before springing down onto the second tier. The second my feet landed, I took off at a run to the left and hopped the guard rail without stopping. I landed on the angled roof that covered that wing of the house and sprinted along it. I got faster as I neared the edge and took a running leap forward with my arms outstretched to grab a hold of the tree at the end. Clinging to the thickest branch I could see, I put my feet on the branch below it and was down on the ground – from start to finish - in about 25 seconds. In another 35 seconds, the fog should really start becoming a problem for the people in that house. 

While I waited, I covered my dark hair with a white knitted ski hat, tore off some strips of tape, and pulled a half-mask respirator on over my head before dropping the tape roll along with Matt's backpack onto the ground. I had everything else that I needed on me. 

Making my way to a window at the end of the hallway, I stood on the ledge, and used a cheap little glass cutter to cut a hole near the lock. I was inside the house with about 5 seconds to go before this place should have really started becoming unbearable, but it was a big place, so I could still see even if my visibility wasn’t entirely clear. I stuck the tape over the hole and pulled my stake as I walked along the corridor. There were the telltale sounds of someone choking in a room to the right, and I got to the doorway as a body tried to make its way outside the room. A human shouldn’t react like that to the fog yet. Vampire or hybrid? It didn’t matter. Body guard, look out, cannon fodder, servant? I don’t think that mattered either. 

He was in a panic. In his manic attempt to escape, he ran right into me and grabbed a hold of my shoulders. Maybe if he’d had the chance, he would’ve asked for help, but as it was, I jammed my stake up through his chin. He let go as I withdrew the stake, and I finished with a swift jab up under his rib cage. He started turning grey and veiny almost immediately, and I shoved him to the side. He hit the floor, and I turned to take my hoodie off, so I could turn it inside out and hide the blood. That’d stick out in all this white.

By then, the fog was really starting to make it almost impossible to see in here, and there were coughs here and there, but nobody else got close enough to me for there to be any more skirmishes. It should be lights out for just about any normal vampires that were staying here. To keep from bumping into any furnishings, I stayed in the middle of the hall as I moved forward and made it to the room roughly where that lit fireplace should have been. 

At the entrance, I used a compact mirror to take a peek inside, and I guess I had that fireplace to thank for this room only being mildly foggy. Well, it was foggy enough that it must’ve gotten the attention of whoever had been torturing Damon when I was on the roof, because that person wasn’t in there. All I saw was Damon, and it wasn’t pretty. He was hanging upside down in the middle of the room, and there was a massive pool of what I can only assume was his blood on the floor under him. Wasn’t a difficult conclusion for me to make. He was covered in it too.

I felt a flicker of something and stomped it down hard. He wasn’t desiccating yet, so that was something, but with all that blood loss, there’s a good chance he’d bled out all his vervain. Damn. 

Klaus could be behind me in the fog, but I think I might’ve heard him calling for Rebekah somewhere in the house around the time that my eyes first landed on Damon, so I used the time I had to get in there and do something about the visibility. Damon’s eyes drowsily followed me as I made my way to the fireplace. The fire was low. It hadn't really been maintained, but what was there was burning higher up the back wall, which left the front of the fireplace clear enough for me to stick my head in there. I located the bright orange of my balloon at the top, got my gun with the wooden bullets out of its holster, took aim, and pulled the trigger. The balloon broke, and I could hear the pie tin at the top block the hole as it fell to replace the space that had been taken up by what had been a full balloon. I got my head out from under there just as the fog mixture came spraying down the shaft. Had I made a lot of noise? Yep. That was all remedied when the fog mixture put the fire out, because as it did, a billow of fog came pouring into the room. 

As the fog’s tendrils reached for Damon, I went to him and took the respirator off, so I could put it on him. He smiled – clearly not quite with it enough to think he didn’t want me there, but at least he recognized me, so I took that as a good sign. An other good sign was the deep breath he took when I got the respirator on him. I needed him able to walk out of here with me to save time. I buttoned his shirt as best I could to try and protect his skin from the fog, and then ignored his protests as I tied my hoodie over his face and neck to protect them. There wasn’t much I could do for his arms and hands, but they were covered in blood, so maybe that’d act as a thick enough barrier to give him some protection. When I was done, I receded into the fog. 

If Klaus didn’t know who was responsible for all of this, then he had to have a good idea of where to go. Nobody would do all of this if they weren’t here for Damon. He couldn’t see me. You couldn’t see anything in here much past your nose. Speaking of nose, he couldn't smell me, because the wolfsbane and vervain had to be burning his nostrils, and yet none of that meant he was out of the house. I wouldn't make the mistake of underestimating him. 

He was strong. He was smart. There's a good chance he found a way to still be in here. Maybe he was deciding on whether he wanted to come back into this room – if the cost was worth the benefit. Until I knew where he was for sure, I couldn't move Damon, and that was the reason for my trap. 

I silently went to one corner of the room and placed a recorder there, hit play and then did the same in the other three corners of the room, but I didn’t place them one after the other. There was a pattern to them, a way to confuse him if he came in here and tried to find me. I’d timed it and the messages I’d left to the second, so it was as I putting the final tape recorder down that my voice started drifting out of the fog somewhere near where the first recorder was.

_“Klaus, this is not a declaration of war . . ._

I heard movement, felt a bit of a breeze, and knew he was in the room. Before he could realize that my voice had come from a recorder, my voice could be heard coming from a different recorder across the room in a diagonal direction. _”Feel free to break some windows, or you know . . . leave._

More movement, more breeze, and as he got to that corner, my voice came from a different corner. _”In fact, if you remember, I told you that you would do this, and I understood why.”_

And now the last recorder. _“But of course I’m going to react.”_ I felt him rush past me as I crouched down with my back to the wall under the window at the far end of the room, gun at the ready. Vampires often did this kind of thing to their victims. I wasn’t fast enough to do it, but I did have ways of recreating the effect, and if you got the right vampire it was rather amusing to see how disorientated they got . . . how scared they were when the tables were turned. That’s not why I was doing this now. I knew he’d know this was a bunch of smoke and mirrors, and he wouldn’t feel fear. He’d feel something different, something I could use against him . . . irrational anger.

“Enough!” I heard him bellow from somewhere to my right. “Just give me – “

The second recorder quickly cut him off. _“I don’t have any white oak.“_

That was true. I didn’t have a single thing on me that would kill an Original today, so I didn’t technically have it. I didn’t want to be tempted into using it, and it’d be counter to the point I was trying to make to use it. If I was willing to go to all this trouble to get Damon back, then wouldn’t I use white oak if I had it? That’s what I wanted him to think. I heard Damon grunt in the middle, and Klaus began his threat, “You have until – “

He was cut off again by the first recorder. _”Don’t threaten me, Klaus. You won’t kill him.”_

Acting a little like a conductor orchestrating myself, I pointed the barrel of my gun towards the fourth recorder just as it began to speak. _”Not because I don’t want you to do it or because I’m going to give into your whiny demands, but because it wouldn’t be in your best interest to do it.”_

Now to the third recorder, _”He’s the reason I’m protecting you . . . I’ve been told that if you die, he does._ ”

On to the second recorder, _”And that may not mean much of anything to you, because I’m fairly insignificant, but it should.”_

The fourth recorder added, _“See, I know who I am, and all of this goes to show you that I really do know you . . . probably better than you know yourself and certainly better than you know me,”_ and then I finished by saying in person, “And what would Sun Tzu say about that?” 

I wasn’t worried I’d give my location away. He’d stopped looking for me after the first the first couple of attempts. I heard Rebekah cough in the doorway as she croaked, “Come on, Nik. We need to – “ 

And he’d had enough. Having to leave meant he’d lost, so he did the thing I’d needed him to do. He picked up the nearest large object he could find, probably the bar along the side of the room, and hurled it through the window. The fog went with it and cleared my line of sight. I hit the sonic dog collar I had in my hand and he grabbed his ears as he doubled over at the waist. There was movement near the door as more of the fog cleared, and I saw Rebekah doing the same thing Klaus was. In the second it took me to see her and take note of the towel she was using to cover her face, Klaus had shaken it off and finally saw me. Without really thinking it through, I changed my mind, readjusted my aim, and took my shot. 

He went from being almost invisible to faltering mid-step about half way to me, and I finally got a good look at him. He was blistered and bloody. An impressive will had gone into him staying in here for this length of time, and there was a hint of something else, momentary shock, possibly a touch of fear, and those damn puppy dog eyes of his. I don’t even know if he heard what I said as his legs gave out, but I felt the need to explain. “Thought I told you to focus on getting yourself unlinked from them.” 

Rebekah hit the ground at the same time he did, but I think there was a little less brain activity going on over there, since it’s her head I’d shot with a wooden bullet. It would’ve been an easier shot if I'd gone for him in the second before he saw me, because he’d been closer. Maybe I should have shot him if I wasn’t sure that they were still linked, but something told me he hadn’t put as much attention on breaking that spell as he should have, and Rebekah might hate me now, but she hadn’t exactly done me any favors by not coming back to cheer practice, so what good was she to me at the moment? At least if she hated me, she was a little more interesting. 

Crouching down over Klaus, I snapped my fingers in front of his open eyes, and there was no response. It’s like I’d shot him – bullet hole and all. He was just as momentarily dead as she was. Damn. I’d already been working on borrowed time to stop Stefan’s plans from happening, but now I’d probably gone and made it worse if whatever Original he was now stalking had gone down along with these two. I heard the chains attached to Damon’s legs start clinking as he moved at the sudden silence and tried to remove my sweatshirt from his head. Yeah, now I could get him down. 

I went to find a chair in the hallway and saw that the front door was wide open. It was clearing in here, but not fast enough for my liking, so I used the butt of my gun to break some glass, then went back with the chair. When I got back to Damon, I got a good first look at what I was dealing with here. Bear traps? How the hell was I supposed to get those off? Even if I got one off, he’d still be trapped by the other one. What if it pulled his leg off? 

Stepping onto the seat of the chair, I looked down at him and asked, “Use the chair to hold yourself up after I get the first one off?” 

Maybe it came out as more of a command than a question, because he responded, “Mm, angelic dominatrix is a good look on you.” I arched an eyebrow that conveyed that I was not amused. He looked around the room and saw the two bodies lying on the ground. They weren’t going to be down forever, just long enough for us to get out of here. He looked back up at me, and slurred, “Yeah, you’re right. There’s good kink and bad kink, and this is the worst kind of kink. Don’t want you gettin’ any ideas.” 

“Seriously?!” We didn’t have time for this. I just needed to know if he could do this. 

He smirked before dryly saying, “Yep. Before we ever get to knives and chains, there’s a whole list of things I’ve imagined doing with - ” and I was annoyed enough that I didn’t put much thought into reaching up to the bear trap on my left and using my frustration to pry it open. His leg fell out of the trap, and I heard him grunt. Now he was left dangling by one leg, and I mostly thought that I shouldn’t have done that the way that I had. His hands went to the legs of the chairs, and he tried to push himself up, but he was pretty weak, so almost all his weight was still on that leg that was in the clutches of the trap. I struggled with the second trap for that reason, and it was him trying to contain a pain filled cry, that gave me enough adrenaline to finally free him. He landed on the floor in a heap, and he didn’t seem to be inclined to move from his spot, so I hopped down, threw one of his arms around my shoulders and wrapped one of my arms around his waist to heft him to his feet. 

He wasn’t healing as fast as he should. His ankles were still mangled, and he was leaving a trail of blood behind us. They’d really had him way too long. I couldn’t stop myself from asking the question I asked as I got him to the doorway. “Did he compel you?” I was more worried about it than I’d let myself think until that point. I mean he had to have lost enough blood to lose the vervain if he’d lost enough that he was only healing a shade faster than a human could. He tiredly shook his head, and I held him a little tighter. “Not sure why I asked. You couldn’t tell me if he – “ 

“He didn’t.” His voice had taken a slightly more serious and calming tone, so I looked up at him. “That was the plan but someone decided to put vervain in the air supply, and it kind of put an end to it before it ever got started.” We’d stopped moving, and he smiled briefly as if to let me know he’d be all right. It was genuine and caring, and I don’t think he was the one who was supposed to be comforting me right now . . . Well, I didn’t need it. I could feel anything I had to feel after I got him home. He exhaled a brief laugh as the look on my face changed to one of determination. 

We made it to the hallway, and it was still a little hazy, but it was starting to clear enough that I could see pretty well even if it was starting to get dark outside. It was more like a smoke-filled bar than anything else. Damon had started taking off his respirator when I saw movement to our left. I held onto him to keep him from falling as I turned to aim at the body coming out of the room. When I saw who it was, I relaxed slightly. “Bonnie?” 

“Eve? What are you doing here?” 

Way to steal the question I was going to ask. The best I could come up with after that was, “Well, what are _you_ doing here?” 

Damon leaned down and whispered, “I need blood,” and I hissed back, “I know.” 

“So then hurry this along, or I’m going to – “ 

“I know . . . Just give me a second.” He wouldn’t be able to stop if he fed on someone, and I was not prepared to deal with that right now. 

Bonnie’s shoulder’s had dropped as she looked around the room, and it’s obvious she wasn’t talking about Damon when she asked, “Is he?" 

“Momentarily out of commission? Yes. Dead? No. You’re not here to help with Damon . . . Klaus brought you here, didn’t he?” A thought was starting to form in my mind. There’s no way I’d get Damon home and stop Stefan if Stefan was still hellbent on killing an Original today, but here was a solution to that problem standing right in front of me. The question was, how did I get her to do it when she hated me, I wasn't too keen on her, the Originals wouldn't be down forever, and we were on opposite sides of this? 


	70. Playing Dirty

Bonnie teared up a bit and nodded at my question of whether Klaus brought her here. Judging from her behavior, I'd say it had probably been a little traumatic for her. I decided that I couldn't let that keep me from my goal, but intended to keep it mind. “But you didn’t break the spell.”

I mean it was obvious, or my bullet for one wouldn’t have taken down two. She looked offended by the mere suggestion of it. “Of course I didn’t!“

“What if I said it isn’t just the Originals that will die if you don’t?”

Back came the disgusted look she generally gave me, except this time she gave it to me before sliding it over to Damon. “If you’re talking about this notion you have that he’ll die if Klaus does . . . “ She paused, and then finally went ahead and said the worst possible thing she could’ve said to me in that moment, because it meant that I lost all sympathy for her. “Then I hope you’re right.” 

Damon leaned on me a little heavier than he had been, and Bonnie started heading for the open door. I tried one last time to talk some sense into her. “What if I said that I don’t think it’ll just be Damon? What if Esther has been allowed to come back and harness any witch power at all because this is really about putting an end to all of them? What if that’s why Imelda is breaking all her own rules to help her? What if they are trying to wipe out all the vampires? Think about all the vampires you know now . . . friends you’ve had your whole life . . . your Mom?”

She’d stopped. “You really believe that?”

“It’s a theory I have . . . I’m pretty certain about it. I know that there is room for doubt, but what if I’m right?”

“You know what I think?” She turned to look back at me, and I knew this was going to be bad. “I think you need help . . . I think all of this . . . this vampire business you’ve been involved in for who knows how long . . . it’s warped your sense of reality. You think you have to fight everyone all the time, including your sister, and she is trying, but you treat her . . . all of us, like we’re the enemy, and we’re not. The enemy is in there, and the sooner we’re rid of him, the better.” 

Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Most of it was fairly true and kind of meant to be helpful in a mean way, but I couldn’t let her walk out that door. “Did I say there was room for doubt?” 

She stopped again and turned to look at me tiredly. “Eve, it’s been a long day. I don’t really have it in me to deal with you right now. I just want to go home.”

Damon was putting more and more weight on me, so I readjusted my hold on him to keep him on his feet, as I exhaled a bitter laugh. “Well, I know one vampire that won’t survive if you walk out the door without breaking that spell.” She stopped again, and I played the only card you can play when you need the person you're dealing with to stay alive. “You may not know this, but I’m an excellent tracker. If I wanted to do it, I could hunt your mother down, and if I did, I could either have a word with her about what it’s like to be a kid with a vampire mother and bring her back to you, or I could take her apart piece by piece and mail you the parts every year on your birthday . . . The choice is entirely yours.” 

She hated me more than just a little in that moment. “That sounds exactly like something he would say.”

I didn't respond. To do so and get pulled into a back and forth would only weaken my position.

“You go near my Mom and – “

“It’ll be your fault. I said the choice was yours for a reason.”

She sucked in a quick breath of air. “Eve – “

“No, I’ve tried talking and being reasonable. I’m done hearing what you have to say. I only care about what you do." If she left now, then I wasn't 100 percent sure that her Mom would still be around for me to send to her in pieces, but I did believe that she would be killing Damon, and she wouldn't show any more remorse for it than she had for taking my father. I had the courage of my convictions. Did she?

Her jaw clench as she looked away from me to keep me from seeing her eyes get glassy. When her eyes flicked back in my direction, I knew what her choice would be, and now we were wasting time. I waved my gun in the direction of the room she’d left, like ‘get on with it,’ and her posture tightened as she gritted her teeth and stalked back to the room. 

I looked up at Damon. “Try to find my bag outside by the tree on the left wing of the house. You’ll find what you need to get you home there.” In all my preparation, I’d talked Matt into donating a bag earlier in the week, so I was quasi-good on that front. 

“Vervain?” 

“As much as a normal local . . . not as much as me.” 

He nodded. I let him go and watched him sway on his feet, but he didn’t fall, so I figured he’d be all right to make it on his own. After following Bonnie into the room, the first thing I noticed was that this was the room with the second fire in it. The second thing I noticed was that there was a grimoire on the table, and next to that, there was a goblet. Bonnie was standing over the book and said, “This says I need their blood.” 

“You mean he just had you in here waiting for who knows how long without telling you what he wanted?” 

She went silent and rather stoic. Was she stalling? Good luck with that. I looked around the room. If Klaus had her here to break the spell, he had to have blood from each of his siblings, didn’t he? Well, he didn’t have it on his person. Would he have left it in his room, or somewhere nearby for when she was ready to cooperate? I glanced at her. Had she hidden it? No, I’d followed her in here. There hadn’t been time, and she wouldn’t have done it before she tried to escape. 

My eyes darted from table to shelve to chair. So many surfaces for the blood to be. Could it be in the bar? No. Finally I saw the table near the door. There was a leather binder on it that seemed out of place given the order of every other surface in the room. I took the few steps I needed to pick it up. Well, would you look at that. Bottles of blood. Like she didn’t know what where this was or what was in it. Wasn’t she like connected to everything in the room? Seeing my mistrust, her eyes narrowed as she took the binder from me. “There are only 4 . . . Aren’t there like 5 of them?” 

My patience was wearing a little thin, but she was right. Why weren’t there 5 bottles? I looked back towards the hallway. Of course Klaus wouldn’t have put his in there, because he would’ve thought he’d be around when she did the spell. I grabbed the goblet, turned around, walked back through the hall to the room where Klaus was, and tossed a look at Damon as I passed. He was slumped on the floor near the wall next to the door. I thought he was going to get that blood. Oh wait, he had. He just hadn’t drunk any of it yet. What was he doing? I didn’t have the time to stop and ask.

When I got back to the room where they’d kept him, I went straight to Klaus and pulled a pocket knife out of my cargo pants. I didn’t really have any idea how much longer he would be down or if he’d wake at the slightest disturbance, but there wasn’t time to worry about it. I knelt down, grabbed his hand, and cut his forearm. His heart wasn’t pumping, so I had to squeeze and squeeze to get enough blood for the goblet. When I had what I thought was enough, I dropped his hand and left, knowing that he wouldn’t heal until he came back to life, but he’d survive . . . maybe . . . it depended on how long this spell took and what was going on out there with Stefan.

When I walked past Damon again, I did a double take in his direction, but kept on walking. Maybe he thought that the vervain in the blood would knock him out. I guess it could if he’d lost so much of his own blood that there wasn’t enough to dilute the vervain’s effects on him. Klaus had really done a number on him, and he’d done it faster than I would’ve thought he could. Maybe hanging vampires upside down to drain them was a faster way to go.

When I got back to the room, I held the goblet out to Bonnie, and she ripped it away from me before setting it on the table. I noted the candles, and my hand went to my pocket. “Need me to light – “

Without bothering to hide her disdain, she threw me a look as her hand shot out, and all the candles lit at once. Neat trick, I guess . . . if you’re into that sort of thing. She said a few words over the goblet, and then said, “I need know whose blood is in these bottles. I can’t do the spell without it.” 

Yeah, she was definitely stalling. I looked at the bottles . . . Hm. If I were Klaus, how would I have arranged them? Reading left to right . . . youngest to oldest, or oldest to youngest? What did I know about them? Rebekah was the baby. Finn was the oldest. Elijah was older than Klaus, and the way Elijah talked about Kol was kind of the way he talked about Klaus, so my guess is that he was older than Kol too. I took a punt at it and pointing at the bottle on the left said, “Rebekah.” Pointing at the bottle next to it, I said, “Kol.” The next would have to be, “Elijah,” and I finished with, “Finn.” 

I don’t know. Something about that didn’t feel quite right. Bonnie was about to open the first bottle, when I quickly stopped her. “No wait! 

Would he do it in birth order, like that? His mind wasn’t organized that way. I looked at the bottles again . . . value. That’s how he would’ve done it. Right to left, who was most important to him? “Elijah . . . Rebekah.” I paused on the last two. Kol had seen a lot more years than Finn had, so I finished with, “Kol and Fin.” When I looked back at Bonnie, her jaw had clenched again, and I felt the need to lighten the mood somewhat. “Hey, don’t look at it, like you’re betraying your friends, but saving them before you realize it.”

“Just shut up. I need to concentrate . . . And for the record, I’m not doing this because I want to do it.”

If she’d just worked with me instead of against me, it wouldn’t have come to this. “Yeah, sure, I’m the big bad ogre that’s forcing you to do something against your will. Understood.” Looking at the goblet, I muttered, “Hurry up.” 

She added blood from what was hopefully Elijah’s bottle to the goblet and said some words over it before doing the same with the other three bottles, and I studied the process, not because I thought she was going to intentionally get it wrong, but because there was just something about magic. It was a little like chemistry for magical folks . . . or baking. I guess that working with plants the way I did, I used a little bit of anti-magic. Was that the same as using magic? No, that felt clean. This felt . . . not dirty, but maybe unnatural, which was strange in and of itself, since it’s nature that gave Bonnie her powers, and why she could do it was totally natural, because it was something that was passed onto her by her genes. 

The how was what was unexplainable to me. Maybe that’s because I wasn’t a witch and would never fully understand it, but how did her tapping into the natural world and saying a few words over a cup full of blood do anything? I watched her pour the blood onto the table, and she said a few more words over it. I guess she did something, because there was a change in the atmosphere of the room right before the pool of blood began to separate into 5 distinct puddles. Okay, I could kind of make sense of it. If she tapped into nature and asked it to do something for her, then I could see nature connecting with the different DNA types in the blood and separating it out, but what about the plasma and – The flames on the candles all shot up by at least a foot, and I took an instinctive step back as she said, “It’s done.”

Okay, now what did the fire have to do with anything? How did that have an impact on any of what I’d just been thinking? Ugh, magic. Give me science any day. At least I could make sense of that. I tore my attention away from the blood pools and glanced briefly at Bonnie. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t do it for – “

“Yeah. Yeah.” 

I turned to walk away from her, and she brushed past me to get out of the room first, “And stay away from my Mom.”

I lazily replied, “Will do,” and she glared at me over her shoulder as she stormed out the front door of the house. Not a bad idea. All of us should really get as far away from Klaus as possible as soon as possible. He wasn’t going to take any of this very well, and Rebekah? Yeah, we needed to go, especially since that spell wasn’t linking Klaus to his sister anymore. 

As if reading my mind, Damon dropped the now empty bag of blood on the floor as he finished it and flashed towards me. Before I could really process what he was doing, he’d picked me up and started running . . . fast, like way too fast for me to adjust to it at all, so when he dropped me maybe 100 yards into the woods a second later, I felt water flood my mouth, and him collapsing on top of me didn’t help. I was so sure that I was going to be sick that I think I may have said it out loud, and a moment later, Damon clamped his hand down over my mouth and put a finger up over his lips to tell me to be quiet. He was still weak. In fact, I think that blood bag had only managed to get him this far, and it showed, but he could hear just fine. He could certainly hear what was going on back in that house better than I could, not that I needed super hearing to hear the roar that came from that house a few seconds later. 

Okay Klaus was frustrated at losing . . . it’d take maybe a minute for him to reorient to being alive again, and then he’d notice he was alive, while Rebekah was still down. That should lead him to the room where the spell had been done, and then he’d see the puddles of blood. Maybe that would be enough to buy some good will with him, because there’s no way Bonnie would have done that without someone forcing her to do it. He’d think through what I’d said, look around at what I’d done, maybe listen to the recordings again, and check out the roof. He’d realize I hadn’t used a white oak bullet to shoot his sister, and then he’d . . . he’d probably come knocking. I’d done enough to cover my ass regarding the white oak I’d gotten, but I hadn’t done enough to resolve me taking something from him, namely Damon, without some kind of a toll. 

Damon slowly removed his hand, and I whispered, “We’ll be okay . . . I promise.”

If he’d had the energy to roll his eyes, he would have. In fact, he made half an attempt to do it before resting his forehead on mine. I would’ve offered him my blood, but that would’ve been a bad idea. I was toxic to a vampire on a good day, and he was far from being on a good day. He needed to get home to his stocks that weren’t tainted by vervain. “Think I’ve finally figured it out . . . You’re completely insane.” Figures that’s the kind of sweet nothing he’d whisper to me. 

“That’s the second time in 10 minutes or less that someone has hinted at that.”

He exhaled a tired laugh and shook his head. “No hinting about it, Evie . . . You’re certifiable.” My forehead scrunched up in irritation, and he added, “But I love you anyway,” and I relaxed a little until he said, “You left.” Now wasn’t really the time to get into this, was it? Or was he reasonably sure that Klaus was busy searching the house? Seemed like a good reason for us to get the hell out of here, but on the other hand, with as slow as Damon was going to be, maybe it was better to lay low until Klaus was either preoccupied with something else or left. 

Given all my preparation for today, I hadn’t really prepared to have this talk at all, let alone right now, but it didn’t really matter if I was ready for it, because Damon decided to carry on with it by saying. “You just came back from a hunt, and then you took off again, but you didn’t just leave, you staged a jailbreak – “

“Yeah? Ask yourself why even you are calling it a jailbreak.” I felt his body tense and just knew that he’d taken that the wrong way. “I wasn’t running from you. I just knew that nobody was going to let me leave free and clear if y’all thought I had what you wanted, and – “

“Which you totally do.” My jaw tightened in frustration, and he added, “How long have you had it?”

My eyes clearly said, ‘Don’t ask me that,’ and I finished what I’d been saying, “I knew Klaus would never believe I didn’t have any white oak either, and I knew what he was going to do. I didn’t have time for an inquisition from anyone – “

“You mean me, because I know when you’re lying.”

“Withholding information isn’t lying!”

“So you admit it.”

Oops. My eyes immediately averted from his smug face as he pulled back to look down at me. “I admit to nothing except that I didn’t know how much time I had, and I needed to get ahead of him. What’s the point of all this if I lose you to him anyway?”

“What’s the point of all this if you’re just going to leave anyway?” 

“But I wasn’t leaving forever.”

“If you were so sure he was going to do this, then why didn’t you wait for me, and we could’ve left together?”

He had a point, but I didn’t take it into consideration as I responded, “And stay on the run for who knows how long? I spent my entire life being on the run from the legend. I will not do it again now that I’ve met the man behind it. How’d that work out for Rose or Katherine? No, I had to slap him upside the head and tell him I wouldn’t put up with his nonsense. It’s the only language he understands. The next time I see him, things will be different.” 

“The next time? No. We need to leave now. There’s no way – “

Damon was an underdog and scrappy, like me. A fight didn’t scare him. “We’re not leaving.” 

Pointing back at the house, he exclaimed in a loud enough whisper, “Eve, do you have any idea what you just did?!”

“Yep . . . and we’re not leaving. I hid to do what I had to do, and that’s it. Now that I’ve resurfaced, I’m staying in plain sight.” 

As if that’d be fine if Klaus was dead, he quickly said, “If you really have white oak, then you just threw away the best chance we had of killing him!” 

“Don’t act like you don’t have some white oak yourself . . . or more accurately, Stefan does . . . I mean it is how he was planning to get you back.“ I was watching him, and before he could angrier or respond, my hand decided to float up to the side of his face and slide up to his hair on its own accord. As he relaxed into my palm, I whispered, “I think we should whisper fight more often . . . Takes some of the sting out of it.”

Touching his forehead to mine again, he sighed, “Evie,” and I responded, “I know,” because I did. I hadn’t been sure how he would take it – if he’d decide to get even by going to Elena, or if he’d hate me the way he hated Katherine, or a million other bad scenarios I’d run through over the last week, but now that I was with him again, I knew that he’d more than missed me. He’d felt that fear, the fear of being abandoned again, of not being wanted, of being alone. Anything I’d done could be forgiven as long as I was back, but it was a lot for him to handle with the circumstances surrounding me being here. “You dealt with it pretty well though . . . all things considered. Caroline can take care of herself, and you didn’t kill the guy you attacked at the bar. Just had a few fights with Stefan. Could’ve been worse.”

“Stefan said you didn’t go far, so I thought you might be watching . . . didn’t want you to just decide to leave for good.”

Because I wouldn’t think he was worth coming back for if he did kill someone? “I’m not Elena.”

“I know. I’m well aware of those mental gymnastics you go through, so you don’t have to lose someone . . . but you have more people now.” 

“That’s funny, because I feel more alone now than I ever used to feel.” 

He lifted his head to look me in the eyes and tried again. “Okay, well, then how about this? If there is a way to screw things up, I will find it . . . I should save that special ability of yours for something big . . . Been toeing that line for a while now with all this Klaus business, and killing someone to get you to come out of hiding when you’re too stubborn to actually fall for it didn’t seem worth it.”

I think that wasn’t quite an apology, but at least an acknowledgement that things had gotten kind of out of hand with our opposition over Klaus. Well, if those were the things that’d prevented any fatalities, I’d take them. “I wasn’t watching with my own eyes, but I was aware of what was going on.”

“Who helped you?” He wouldn’t attack Matt, but he would be jealous about me going to someone else instead of him. Still trying to find the right answer, I heard him say, “Was it that hunter?” and laughed.

“No.”

“Eve, there’s something wrong with that guy.”

“Did you meet him?”

“Yes. He showed up at the bar one night.”

Well, then I could tell him what I really thought. “I know there’s something wrong with him.” Damon watched me to see if I was being truthful, and I said, “I can’t put my finger on what it is, but I know . . . It’s not that he’s a hunter. I didn’t know him before he died, but I think he came back wrong.”

“So you just housed him with your sister.”

I shrugged a shoulder. “One problem at a time.”

“What happens when all those problems hit at once?”

“You mean like today with your brother out there stalking an Original? I managed it.” 

“I mean when you’ve got the Original witch, the One-Eyed witch, a dead hunter, and the vampire you made a widow all involved and they decide to hit us all at once . . . along with Klaus and his entire family after what you just did.” He gave one last look over his shoulder and got to his hands and knees. “Come on, we need to move.” 

Couldn't help but notice that he'd said _us_ almost as a counter to me saying _I_. I crawled out from under him and helped him to his feet. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and I held him around the waist. It was going to take forever to get him home at this rate. “You’re giving me too much credit. Team Evil isn’t assembling to deal with me . . . and they’re not all bad.”

After he’d ran through everything in his head again, he grumbled. “Well, I say they are, but even if you’re right, you still have no idea who is and isn’t on our side, and it’s not just them.” Looking around us he added, “You didn’t just burn a bridge today that hasn’t even been built yet . . . You demolished any chances that it’ll ever be built.”

“With Bonnie?”

“With her and anyone she tells.”

He was probably right about that, but I didn’t want to think about it right now. “Well, nobody likes the referee.”

“You’re more than a referee, and you know it. You crossed a line today.”

“For both of them . . . both sides.” It felt like it was important for me to point out. “Would it help if I said I was sorry?”

Still looking around our surroundings, like he was alert for any signs that we were being followed, Damon answered, “Not really. I don’t think she’s going to want to hear – “

“I meant to you.” He immediately looked down at me. 

"Are you sorry?"

"For what?"

"I'll take that as a no."

"Yeah . . . I don't think I did anything wrong, but you do. Guess I'm just trying an experiment." I had both apologized to Matt and worked with him on a task, so maybe it really was working on the task with him that had done it. 

Before I could come up with a suitable task that went beyond getting Damon home, he relaxed with a quick smile. “I don’t care how many lines you cross as long as I can cross them with you."

"Even ones that I don't fill you in on ahead of time?"

"Did I, or did I not let you strong-arm her into helping you?”

“I don’t know. You got pretty heavy right about then.”

A smirk formed for a brief moment, and he said, “I was mostly listening to your heart.” 

“Thinking about having a bite?”

“Making sure you were real.” 

“Oh.” He went back to what I could only assume was making sure that we weren’t being followed, and I said, “And the angelic dominatrix?” 

His head snapped down in my direction, and then he grinned. “I was 50-50 that you were real then.”

“How worried do I need to be about that imagination of yours?" He and I hadn't even come close to having sex, and there is no way I could possibly live up to whatever it was he had in his mind. I think every time he backed off, it was when my heart inadvertently betrayed me and took off like a jackhammer. I'd say he was incredibly patient, but the truth is that because of his nature, he was probably prolonging the chase as much because he enjoyed it as he was for my benefit.

“It seemed like the fastest way to get down.” So, he knew it'd annoy me. Do it quick, like ripping off a band-aid, instead of having me waste time worrying about whether or not I was hurting him? Pretty smart. There’s a chance I would’ve hurt him even worse if I had over thought it.

“You mean you played me.” 

“Like you’re one to talk.” 

“Fair enough.” His arm tightened around my shoulders, and some of the knots I’d been feeling in my chest all week loosened a little. I’d gotten him back. Now I had to figure out what toll I needed to pay to keep him.


	71. Homecoming

By the time we got back to the boarding house, it was completely dark, and I was using Damon’s ability to see to get us there. He was heavy again. We were both tired and worn out. I hadn’t been able to change into the dark clothes I’d had in my bag, because we'd left it there, so I was still wearing my white clothes, which stood out in the dark, although by that point, they’d darkened somewhat. My white long-sleeved t-shirt was now a rusty color, mostly from Damon’s dried blood that was caking him, and my pants actually matched, because they’d been stained a reddish color by the mud. I still didn’t want to be outside and open to attack any longer than necessary. I wouldn’t be comfortable until I got him home. That way of thinking proved to be my undoing.

You know, you plan for a hunt, and it goes off without much of a hitch, but that only required getting things right for 5 to 10 minutes at most. Then there was this thing called life that seemed to happen in between hunts, and that’s where the problems were. It was too long of a gap to be prepared to deal with any eventuality. It’s where the real mistakes were made, and the one I made was thinking I was in a safe-zone when I crossed the threshold of the front door, because that’s when I relaxed, not that there’s much that I could’ve done to prevent what happened from happening if I hadn’t relaxed, but I probably could have prevented injury to myself if I’d planned for a terrible homecoming.

Before we’d even had a chance to close the front door, Caroline came around the corner. Her eyes widened in surprise. She wasn’t expecting either of us. “Eve? . . . Eve!” Still didn’t like Damon, then, huh? I guess that’d be a long time coming and with good reason, but she seemed reasonably happy to see me. “Where have you – “ 

A breeze blew past her. I saw the ends up of her hair flip up at the same time she froze, and my stakes would’ve been more ideal, because this was going to be a close interaction, but they were in the pockets on my cargo pants, and my gun was already in my hand. I was in the process of lifting it when I was shoved away from Damon and into the wall. I felt it give, or maybe that was my spine. No, I could feel my fingers and wiggle my toes, but it was still bad. Maybe just a couple of ribs then, and definitely my head. When I first saw the gust of wind, my mind was still on Klaus, so I’d thought that he'd gotten here faster than I’d anticipated, but why would Caroline be entertaining him? Now a crazed head of blonde hair was growling at me, and it wasn’t Rebekah.

Before she could explain herself or bite me, Damon used what strength he had to pull Alice away from me, and she used her already superior strength to shove him off. He flew into a different wall, but he’d bought me enough time and space to bring my gun up with both hands and take a clean headshot as she turned to face me. Alice dropped, and another flash came through the still open front door, but I could see it out of the corner of my eye, which meant it was a younger vampire.

That didn’t mean that I was fast enough to stop it any better than I had her though, because I soon found myself slammed back up against the wall to my right. Stefan? Let me guess. They knew. That, or the dynamics around here had completely changed in the last week and Elena was the one who had more competition than I’d thought, because he yelled, “Haven’t you done enough? Leave her alone,” and I thought that was a little bit of an overreaction for a vampire he barely knew.

“Stop it!” A second flash of colour pulled him back. He'd been in the process of letting me go anyway and didn't particularly like being manhandled, so he was a little harsh in yanking his arm away from her and knocked her back in the process. Maybe you could say she was overreacting too, but it soon became apparent why she hadn't wanted a ripper all that close to me as she put herself between us and yelled, “Can’t you see, she’s hurt? What is wrong with you? It’s like I’ve been saying, she didn’t have anything to do with what happened earlier . . . right, Eve?” 

I could taste copper and salt starting to fill my mouth and exhaled a bloody laugh. “Depends on what you mean by earlier.”

“To Alice!”

My eyes landed on Damon, and my good humor dropped as I saw my sister tending to him and trying help him sit up. Didn’t really appreciate the look she gave me over his head that telegraphed, ‘I’m feeling protective of something that’s mine, and this is your fault.’ All I could really think in that moment was, _‘Fuck,_ ’ because really what else was there to think about it? I’d seen enough movies to know that if you told someone that you were with the person they liked, it made you the villain of their story, and it also made them like the person you were with more. I could not, would not, absolutely refused to fight with my sister over a man. I’d just continue to play dumb, ignore, and evade, but I’m not sure how much longer that was going to work. “Yeah, no . . . nothing to do with that.” Elena’s phone started ringing at just that moment, and I sniped, “Should probably answer that.” 

When Elena looked at her phone, what she said was more to Caroline than it was to me. “It’s Bonnie.” Perfect timing. No really. It must be karma, because I’m fairly certain that I knew what was about to happen, but as Elena’s thumb hit the button to answer, Damon took her phone and hurled it against the wall on the other side of the hall. As the shattered pieces rained down onto the floor, I felt the overwhelming urge to just tell everyone what’d happened anyway. 

Damon wasn’t hearing a word Elena said as she slapped his chest and yelled at him about her phone. His eyes found me, and he must’ve known what I was tempted to do, because as he rested his head back against the wall to fill the void of support that Elena left, he shook his head. “Don’t.”

My gaze floated around the room. And why was that exactly? Why not take a flamethrower to this - whatever the hell this was - sooner rather than later? The broken furniture and collapsed bodies, the blood, the cracked walls, the anger, bitching, and moaning. I traded my dysfunctional family for this? Was it something to preserve? I hadn’t really planned for this homecoming, but I don’t think I could have. I’d severely underestimated the impact of my exit, because how the hell did they think I did what happened to Alice? Sneak up on her well enough to shoot her with a long range weapon? Sure, I could do that. Sneak up on her or was fast enough to break her neck with my bare hands? I wouldn't even try. That’d required the speed and strength of an Original.

I dazedly looked at the cracked wall near the door and saw a big circle of blood where my head had been. Did I deserve that? I’m not sure. Not for anything they knew about, but for what I did to Bonnie earlier . . . It hadn’t merely been a threat. I’d meant what I’d said to her, and maybe saying that to get her to do something right was wrong, but hadn’t the overall action been right? Nobody in this room would think that regardless of the outcome. Even Damon thought I was crazy, and was I? 

What if my Mom was wrong? Then everything I’d done was definitely wrong, wasn’t it? Or was it? Was letting them kill Klaus right? Was he totally irredeemable? If no, then that meant they were still actually wrong, didn’t it? He hadn’t really retaliated against any of them for any of the things they’d done to him yet, so maybe he had a shot at redemption. I mean he was still a bad guy, and he had struck first by descending upon this town, killing Jenna and Elena, and then stealing the old Stefan away from them. He’d killed a lot of people too just for kicks. He also had some pretty bad plans for Elena. If he was redeemable, then he was just barely so, and did that make up for all the harm he’d caused over the last millennium? Was I wrong here? 

If you’re the only one screaming there’s a fire in a crowded theater, and it's full of people who don’t think there’s a fire and just keep watching the movie, are you crazy, or are you just more informed? Still. If you took the morality out of it and laid out all the evidence, it wasn’t unreasonable to come to the conclusion that Klaus dying would be a net benefit to the people in this room and possibly the world. I mean, all I had to go on was that my Mom had said not to kill him. It’s my belief that she knew more than I did and wouldn’t have said that about her own murderer if it wasn’t true, but what if she hadn’t known more and was merely causing problems for everyone else, the way they seemed to think? 

I didn’t think my Mom would do that to me, but then how well did I really know her as a person, because that was entirely separate from knowing her as a Mom. What did she get up to on the weekends and weeks that I spent with my Dad? What did she do after I left to come to Mystic Falls? Was it like Damon said, and when I wasn’t around, she was allowed to have what she considered to be fun? But messing with me from beyond the grave wasn’t fun for her, was it, or had her mind already started to deteriorate in her Monster Purgatory? No, she hadn’t seemed like that at all when I’d seen her. But would I have noticed, or was I just so happy to see my Mom one last time that I’d ignored it? 

My thoughts were interrupted when Caroline’s head snapped in the direction of the still open front door, like she sensed something was coming. If she did, then she was about half a second too late, because she rushed towards the door only to be batted back into the house, like a rag doll. Wonder who that could be . . . or not.

Her attacker sauntered right on past me, and again, it wasn’t the one I was expecting. Sage? She didn’t have any interest in me at all. Stefan charged her, and then he too went flying. She stepped over Alice with little to no thought about it, and here’s the bad thing about being a hunter and letting those around you question your morality to the point where you start second-guessing yourself. It makes you wishy-washy on what is right and what is wrong, and those seconds where you’re deciding what to do are seconds that could mean life or death. The first thought I had shouldn’t have been, how much more trouble am I going to be in if I kill her right now? It should’ve been swift action with little to no thinking involved. 

Stefan really seemed to be her target, because Sage completely ignored Caroline, who was still nursing her injuries, and went directly to him. She punched him again, and he went sliding across the floor before I decided I should probably do something. Using the wall behind me to steady myself, as the muscles in my sides screamed at me to stop, I raised my gun using my right hand and aimed it at her heart, but before I could pull the trigger, yet another vampire came in through the door, and then my idiot sister decided to run at him. I presume she had a stake, or maybe she was just running for the door, but either way, he knocked her away with a little laugh. It snapped me back to reality and made me mentally strong enough to overcome any injuries I may have. 

He saw me move almost too late and grabbed a hold of my right forearm with both hands. One hand shoved my arm into the wall and the other twisted my wrist. If I’d put up any resistance to him disarming me, his strength would’ve snapped my arm, so as he twisted, I went with his motion at the same time my left hand went to the back of my head. Since blood was still pouring from the wound, I got enough on my fingers to shove it in his eyes as I dropped the gun. He let go, reached for his eyes, and screamed at the vervain that burned like acid. After that, he never really had a chance. 

As he threw an arm wildly to his right, I stepped behind him, while reaching for the stakes in the pockets on either side of my cargo pants. Little twirl to get a better grip on both stakes and then they were swiftly plunged into either side of his neck. His screams cut off, as he gurgled around the blood. Finally, he was in a weak enough state that I was able to reach up with my hands even though he was taller than me, one on top his head, the other under his chin. Quick twist up to break his neck, and he fell to his knees in front of me. Now I had clear visibility of Sage. 

Why not just kill him? Well, I was hurt. Damon was down. Alice was temporarily dead. Stefan was a wimp unless his switch was flipped or he was acting like a psycho because of Klaus, and Caroline was a baby vampire, so the likelihood that Sage would get away was pretty high, and if that happened, then I needed her underling vampire to tell me where she might be going, so I could stop her from coming after the people in this house again. 

Holding onto the stake from the right side of the nameless vampire’s neck, I dislodged it and then carelessly shoved his body forward. Sage was fast, and there’s not a chance I’d be able to throw anything fast enough to make it to her heart on a good day, let alone in my current state, so she’d probably swat it away, but if she was focused on blocking that, it’d give me enough time to dive to my gun and take my shot. I’d only have one . . . Well, that’s what I would’ve done without having to really think it through, except none of that happened. I grasped the stake, ready to throw it, but stopped because she started coughing. Usually, I’d take advantage of any opening I had, but for some reason, it seemed a little rude to throw anything at her when she was in the middle of a coughing fit, and why _was_ she coughing?

They usually only did that when they’d been bitten by a werewolf. It’s possible that in the mood he was in, Klaus had bitten her, but it should take longer than this for his venom to take effect. Vampires usually had a couple of days before they got to this stage, and why would he have bitten her a few days ago? She collapsed onto her knees, and I relaxed my stance altogether. My forehead furrowed in confusion as she fell on her side. I looked around the room to see if anyone else knew what was happening, and they all seemed as unsure as I felt . . . and then that was it . . . She stopped coughing. She stopped moving. Elena said she was dead. What the hell just happened? 

Elena looked back at the vampire I’d planned to used for questioning and added, “They both are.” 

I stepped to the side to get a better look at his face, and sure enough he’d gone gray and veiny, the way all vampires do when they die. Well, he hadn’t died because of anything I’d done to him. I gingerly crouched down over him to see if I could find any clues, and a hand reached for my arm. My head snapped to the left, and then I relaxed. It was just Damon. “I need blood.” Yeah. Yeah, he did. His eyes flicked to Stefan, and he told him to do something about the bodies. 

I know it wasn’t good to keep the bodies in case anyone came knocking, and for the sake of hygiene, you couldn’t just leave dead bodies lying around, but didn’t we have to figure this out? It’s not like we had to do a vampire autopsy or anything, but getting to the bottom of this seemed important. What if there was some previously unknown vampire plague out there? Maybe Esther had engineered one. If she had, then Sage had just brought it into this house. “But – “

“We’ll figure it out, but I need blood.” Yeah, he did. He looked terrible, and he wouldn’t make it to the basement himself. Not sure how I was going to make it to be honest. I slowly stood, and my body made it known that I had a lot of healing to do. The fastest I could manage to get to the basement was at a shuffle, and it took all my mental fortitude to finish the mission. After the knock to my head, I just don’t think my brain was functioning all that well, or I would’ve started to make the connections that he had. There’s a reason he was sending me out of the room, but I only caught the tail end of it after I made my way back with about four bags of clean blood for him.

“So Sage and this Troy guy die within an hour of Finn.” 

Finn was dead? Is that why Sage had come here? Well, I’d known it hadn’t been Klaus or Rebekah that Stefan had been stalking. I knew Elijah was splitting his time between Charlotte and Savannah, so it probably wasn’t him. That’d left Kol and Finn, and they’d both been out of town, but one of them must’ve come back, or Matt wouldn’t have called. I guess maybe I’d thought it was Kol after the way Alice had acted. Looks like I’d been wrong. 

I looked from Caroline to Damon, who was sitting with his back against the wall, watching the others, like he already had the answer and was waiting for them to figure it out on their own. How do I know that? His eyes flicked the other way briefly when he saw me, like he felt guilty about something, and I guess on some level, it was starting to make sense why, but I wasn’t going to say it or even let myself think it until I was sure. Standing next to him, I leaned against the wall to watch the others and passed the bags down to him. If I’d sat down, there’s no way I was getting back up on my own.

Elena and Caroline were tossing ideas back and forth, but Stefan seemed like he might be onto something with the way he was pacing back and forth, so he’s the one I was watching. When he finally stopped, he looked at his brother, like he already knew the answer and was expecting Damon to tell him he was right. “It’s the blood. Finn turned Sage. Sage turned Troy . . . They’re all part of the same vampire blood line.” And there you have it. Looking at me as I snorted, he added, “That’s what Isabelle meant, isn’t it? Damon will die if Klaus does because we’re part of his blood line.“

It took Elena all of a few seconds to fearfully say what the other two must be thinking. “But if Klaus is dead, then that means . . . “ and I broke out with a bad case of the giggles. I started hugging my sides to dampen the pain shooting through them, and Stefan snapped, “Can you tell her to stop?“

I heard Damon casually crack open his second bag of blood and say, “Nah, I think I’m gonna let her have this one,” as the others started to become unnerved by what appeared to be me laughing at what they thought was impending doom for a majority of the people in this room and Damon not giving a shit. I think he might’ve explained it to them after that, but I barely heard him as the weight of the turmoil that I’d gotten so used to carrying around with me all the time, seemed to force itself out of my body in the form of ever increasing laughter. Sliding down the wall to land in a crouching position, I rocked forward to rest my forehead on my knees and curled myself into a little ball. 

All the sleepless nights and agonizing days had been worth it, because my Mom had been right. Even I had started to doubt, but she hadn’t been messing with me. She'd used the last seconds I'd ever have with her to make sure I wouldn't be alone. I’d wanted to believe in her so much, and I hadn’t been wrong to do it. She’d been right. I had too, about Imelda and Esther, all of it. 

Amidst all the unhinged laughing, the strangest thing happened, and I don’t know what caused the shift, but I definitely noticed the change when the last laugh turned into something of a sob. There were going to be more of those, and I’m not sure I could stop them. I had to get out of here before anyone noticed. Putting my hand back against the wall, I used it for support as I slid myself back up. 

If I was listening to what my body was telling me, I would’ve done it much slower, but the urgency of needing to find somewhere else to go overrode everything else I was feeling, and I was on my feet and walking out the front door before I could become a blubbering mess. I think I made it in time. Nobody followed me, so maybe they didn’t notice, or maybe they just needed time to absorb everything that Damon had said. Whatever they were thinking or doing, I didn’t really care as long they left me alone for a while. I needed something to clear my head, something to put a wedge between me and this overwhelming feeling I didn't fully understand. Was it loss? Was it sadness? Loneliness? Maybe it was a little bit of all those things and more. Luckily, I think I had just the mission in mind to distract myself until I could figure it out.


	72. Looking for Somewhere to Belong

Leaving had been a bad idea. I’d walked because I knew that if I drove, then by the time I got here, my body would have settled in the seated position, and I wouldn’t have been able to get out of the car. I was still moving, which had been the goal, but I was finding it hard to catch my breath and was so sore that I struggled to lift my hand high enough to knock. I was in the process of trying to do that when the door swung open, and there was Imelda. 

I think that when she saw me through the window, she must’ve thought I was Elena, because whatever angry-guardian thing she was planning to say disappeared the moment she laid eyes on me. “Eve?” She actually took a step outside the house to wrap an arm around me, so she could shuffle me inside. That was pretty monumental and said something about her need to take care of others, but I was mostly thinking that she wouldn’t be so nice when she found out that I’d put a temporary hold on her plans for every vampire on the planet. “What happened?”

And here we go. I’d long since stopped crying, because it’d taken me forever to get here. I’d definitely erased any traces of it along the way, so that’s not what she’d meant. It was my grimy state and maybe the way I was holding myself, because she seemed to know I was hurt with how gently she was handling me. “I stopped them . . . I stopped you. My God, Imelda, the entire vampire race?” 

I looked at her as if daring her to deny it, and her face fell as she stopped moving me into the kitchen. “That’s what I thought. One of the Originals died tonight - the one who’s been in a box the longest. He hasn’t actually been around enough to do much damage, but a vampire he turned 900 years ago sure has, and believe me, she had her fun along the way, so who knows how many across the planet just dropped dead. I’d ask why, but I already know, and it’s why you should leave vampire business to people like me . . . People like you let your hatred cloud your judgement.”

She tried that warning tone that my Mom would’ve used on me, and it set me off. “Eve – “

“No! There’s justice, and then there’s genocide . . . Have you ever thought that for being a protector of nature, you’ve wholly misunderstood what it is that nature has been saying for 1000 years? It put limitations on them, but it did allow them to exist.”

“They are not of nature. They are an abomination that should’ve never – “

“Could’ve, should’ve, would’ve . . . they still exist!”

She grumbled, “Not through the use of any kind of conventional magic. By their very existence, they cheat the natural order of things by cheating death.”

“No, I’ve driven a stake through enough hearts to know that they die. It’s just that their first death is a metamorphosis that transforms them into something else. It’s like a virus. They’re sick, and it’s because of magic . . . magic that went against nature but that nature still endorsed enough to allow them to exist, and after 1000 years, they have become a part of our ecosystem. What happens if you make an entire species of anything extinct? It has a negative impact on the entire ecosystem. Off the top of my head, I can think of one area where they’re needed. We no longer have to hide in caves every full moon, because they’ve been a counter to werewolves since they were created, and you know what? I guarantee that werewolves were made by magic too . . . Magic. The cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.”

She’d looked shocked and offended and maybe like she was about to break out into one of her histrionic episodes, but stopped herself as confusion quickly spread across her face. “Did you just quote _The Simpsons_ at me?”

Had I? Yeah, I guess I had. “You’re damn right I did.”

“I seem to remember you using magical items when the situation calls for it.”

She wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t have any way to counter it. “I’m still reconciling that, and don’t change the subject. The bottom line is that while some, or even most, of them are bad, it doesn’t give you free license to wipe all of them out, because you’re going to catch some good ones up along with the bad, and they have a place in the natural order now. You leave it to me, and I will deal with them on a case to case basis.”

“Yeah, and how do you explain that vampire you brought back from Georgia? I hear her numbers were in at least the 90s that you know about. Who knows how many more innocents she’s actually killed?”

I glanced past Imelda and gave one of the kitchen chairs a longing look before sighing. “I’m glad you brought that up. It was 60, not 90, because they couldn’t kill the last 30, and she didn’t actually kill any of those men. She got them for her husband, who was a witch, and he killed them.” I looked at Imelda to drive that point home that the witch was the villain of that particular hunt and thought about one of the paintings I’d seen in that house. 

“As far as I can tell, before she met him, the vampire tended to the sick, injured, and dying – not to feed, but to help the neediest humans as much as possible. It doesn’t absolve her of the part she played in the deaths of the men her husband killed, but I think losing her husband is punishment enough, and she hasn’t killed me for doing that yet. I’m not sure she has it in her to kill a human. Rough them up, knock them out, sure, but kill? She’s not a killer . . . With what you’ve heard, have you also heard that she was a powerful witch before she turned?”

Imelda stayed silent as she finally ushered me to one of the chairs, and I slowly took it, while she turned her back. “And the things she can do . . . I’ve never seen anything like her, Imelda.”

Going to the cabinets to grab some herbs, Imelda asked, “How so?”

“She’s a little of both, I think.” Imelda looked at me over her shoulder, and I explained. “She still communes with some parts of nature. Some vampires can control fog and things like that, but I don’t think that’s what she’s doing. It’s not control. I think she’s still connected to nature, and it reacts to her emotions, a lot of the time without her even knowing. She could create a tornado or stop a hurricane from pummeling a house, and she can read minds from a distance, like she’s connected on a different radio frequency than the rest of us, the way some witches can. Which means that when she was helping those people in pain, she could hear their thoughts, but she helped them anyway, and she is a gentle soul . . . for the most part, which means it must’ve been difficult for her to hear all that agony. If nature could allow her to do all that, then doesn’t it prove that it isn’t completely against them, just allows them to live with limitations, so they can co-exist with the rest of us?”

Finally finding something in one of the tins in the cabinet to put with the other items she'd pulled out, Imelda tossed, “She’s probably a heretic,” over her shoulder.

“A what?”

“A heretic.” She paused to look at me and said, “They’ve been known to exist even though they haven’t been seen in a long time to my knowledge. She wasn’t a witch. She was something else, something that could siphon magic from her surroundings and use it, but it wasn’t her magic to use.” Turning back to the contents of the counter, she began grinding the herbs in a pestle and mortar as she added, “That makes her worse than a run of the mill vampire.”

I rolled my eyes. “She wasn’t that . . . She was a witch in the vein of Esther.”

“Well, you can’t believe anything they say! Of course she’d – “

I cut Imelda off. “No. I got it from someone who knew her when she was alive, and he said she was a lot like Esther. That’s what caught the attention of the vampire who turned her. He saw something in her that he would’ve had himself if he hadn’t been turned from a blossoming witch into a vampire.”

“No doubt something you heard from another vampire.”

“One who didn’t have anything to gain by telling me that.”

“They always have something to gain. This vampire probably wanted you not to kill her.”

No, Elijah hadn’t wanted anything other than for me to be careful around Alice. “All he wanted was my safety, and why would I kill her for that when I didn’t even know what one of these heretics is or that I might want to kill one . . . heretic. Just the term is derogatory, you know. It’s what they used to call you guys when they were doing witch hunts.”

Still working away on the counter, Imelda said, “That’s what they’re called.”

“Yeah? Well, it’s bigoted, and so are you, which is why you can’t see clearly enough to be a part of this fight. Just stay out of it and leave it to – “

I almost jumped when she slammed down a mug that she’d gotten from the cabinet above her. “Hunters?! And where were hunters when I was taken . . . when _I_ needed help?! Nowhere, because hunters never show up until after the damage is already done.”

“Well, I was going to say me, because I wouldn’t trust another hunter. There’s something wrong with most of us . . . but you’re right. It is a primarily reactionary profession, but you still consort with vampire hunters. We’re little more than weapons for you to use in your war, but we must be of some value to you.” 

She turned to look at me in surprise, and I arched an eyebrow in challenge. “I can’t believe you think that!”

Responding dryly, I said, “17 vampires by your 17th birthday . . . Ring any bells?”

“I never thought you’d actually try!”

“Oh come on. You knew what you were getting with me.”

“Okay, maybe I did, but I didn’t think he’d let you do it. You were a child! You’re still a child. The world is black and white, and you – “

“See it as gray? Well, what’s wrong with a little nuance? Nothing. In fact, I think that’s the way the world really works. You’re the one who is acting like a child. It’s like you were emotionally stunted at the age of 15 or 16, and I completely understand why, but you’re also really powerful, and with great power comes great responsibility. You're starting to make me question whether you deserve it.”

She opened her mouth to argue with me and then slumped back against the counter. “Spiderman now? Really?”

I lifted a shaky shoulder and then sighed. “If I’d been alive back then, I would’ve done something to help you.”

“Back then?! How old do you think I am? There’s only like 10 years between us.”

Yeah, yeah, she was right. Digging the palms of my hands into my eyes, I sat back with a wince and muttered, “Sorry. Think I had the ability to do math knocked out of my head.”

She put something on the table in front of me and said, “By one of these Originals you were trying so hard to save, no doubt.”

Exhaling a painful laugh I shook my head and then looked up at her. “Actually, it was the gentle soul I was telling you about. I don't know what her deal is. I think she wants one of them dead, the one who created her. He was drawn to her magic, toyed with her for his own amusement, turned her to see what would happen to such a promising witch, I’m guessing, and then left her a broken mess to try and find her own way in the world. She found someone who made it a little more bearable for her, and I killed him, so now all she has is revenge, and she thought I took that away from her tonight.”

Pointing a finger as she pulled a chair away from the table, Imelda responded, “Which you did.”

“Yeah, but – “

“But nothing. She wanted revenge. You took that away, and your gentle soul did some serious damage to you . . . You have no idea how bad your condition is, do you?”

I automatically felt the back of my head and looked at my fingers. There was still blood there, but it was drying up. Apparently that hadn’t been what Imelda had meant. She rolled her eyes before grabbing a napkin from the middle of the table before shoving it in my direction. Giving her a wary look, I took it, and she tilted towards my mouth. Oh. That. I thought I’d wiped that up pretty well before I tried to knock, but apparently there was more there already. It just wouldn’t stop pooling up inside my mouth. Either I bit my tongue really heard, or there was a deeper issue at play. Wiping around my mouth, I muttered, “I’m walking. I’m fine.” 

“Mind over matter only gets you so far. At this point, you’re really just prolonging the inevitable.”

I threw her a dirty look and changed the subject. “You know, if you weren’t so close-minded, you could probably team up with the wampire.”

“Wampire?”

“Witch-vampire hybrid.”

“Heretic.”

“Whatever. I can’t say for sure that it’d be such a bad thing if Kol was dead. Neither of the brothers he has left seem to trust him. One of them kept him in a box for hundreds of years and the other one made it clear he thinks Kol’s a live wire . . . The problem is that Kol has probably turned a lot more than his dead brother ever did . . . Imelda, it’s just wrong. You don’t kill thousands or tens of thousands to get one evil person off the planet.”

Leaning forward to lean her forearms on the table, she asked, “And if all those thousands are evil too?”

“The odds aren’t in your favour that they would be. Even if all but one or two of them are, you can’t just kill an entire line like that without doing due diligence.”

Pushing the glass towards me, she said, “Here.”

Now that I’d been forced to look at it, I did so in annoyance. I’d been avoiding it for a reason. “What is it?”

“I’m not trying poison you.”

“That’s what someone who is trying to poison you would say.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Well, you would if you were smart.”

She smirked at my insult. “Nah, if I was going to poison you, I wouldn’t give you a choice. I’d just force it down your throat.” Holding up a pouch she said, “Drink a pinch of this twice a day, every day, and you should be good as new in a couple of weeks. The sooner you start taking it, the better.”

“I didn’t come here for this.”

“I know . . . Why did you come here? Was it to get advice on what you should do, because I think you already know what I think.” 

Because being right wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Doing the right thing even though everyone else thinks it’s wrong is really hard, and when you were proven right you just felt . . . sad. I didn’t want to gloat or need them to come grovelling or tell me I’d been right. It was a great fantasy when the facts weren’t out there for everyone to see, but now, I think that’d just embarrass me and make me feel weird and draw attention to me that I didn’t want. I mostly felt hard done by, because I had been, and there was proof of it now. I just wanted to be left alone until I could adjust to this new reality. I flicked a look in the direction of the doorway and answered, “I need all the white oak stakes in the house.”

“So, you’re the only one allowed to have one?”

“No.” I found a nick in the table top and picked at it with my thumb. “It is the only way for me to keep mine though.” 

My eyes flicked up to Imelda to see what she thought about that, and she sat back in her seat. “What’s the point in you keeping it if you’re never going to use it?”

“You never know . . . Who’s to say I won’t need it some time? You can do a lot of damage without killing someone if you have the right weapon. And really, I have to give Klaus something to keep the peace after what I did earlier.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.” She waited for me to explain, and I sighed as I went back to picking at the table. “For a split second, he genuinely believed he was going to die, then it was lights out, and to him in that moment, it might as well have been permanent . . . I fixed it partially, but it’s not enough . . . I just need him to leave everyone alone until I figure out another way to stop him that doesn’t involve killing him.”

“There aren’t too many of those.”

“I know, but it can be done . . . maybe not forever, because Mikael was only locked away for about . . . Mikael . . . why didn’t I think of that?” 

I looked back up at Imelda, and she quickly said, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s dark magic, Eve. I think you got a taste of what it can do to someone on your hunt in Georgia.”

I had. There was a long enough pause, and it was filled with a hidden tension. My forehead crinkled as I tried to work it out. She already knew everything that'd happened on that hunt . . . Jeremy. That kid had a big mouth.

“You know what I used to disable that witch in Savannah.” She lifted a shoulder, and I sighed at the fleeting sad look on her face. She thought I was going to use it on her. Well, now I definitely wasn't touching that water, and I was still with it enough to defend myself, so she wouldn't force it on me, because she had no way of knowing what weapons I had to use against her if she tried. “Guess you should be counting your lucky stars that I have it instead of someone who kills anything supernatural indiscriminately then, huh?” 

“You still hate witches though, don’t you?” 

Elena had a big mouth too. “Depends on the witch, I guess . . . I just think you guys are more dangerous than you know. I’d actually place you at the top in the hierarchy of threats because of all the things you guys can do, but just like with vampires or werewolves, it depends on the person and what you do with what you have . . . plus, you guys are gross.”

“Gross?!”

She exhaled an incredulous laugh, and I said, “Always doing weird and disgusting things with just about every body part you can think of using.”

“That sounds wrong on so many levels.”

“I know. That’s because it is.” She laughed a little brighter, and after taking a shallow breath, I added, “You know you’re working with the Queen of Dark Magic though, right?”

Not liking that assessment, Imelda immediately said, “I’m not working with her. I’m just staying out of her way.”

“And keeping things on track . . . Oh Bonnie, you should go talk to your mother if you want your power back. Sure, Stefan, I haven’t let a vampire get close enough to talk to me and live in over a decade, but I’ll help you commune with the dead witches on the other side, since Bonnie can’t do it, and they can hide your coffin for you.” My eyebrows rose, like I thought it was obvious that’s what had happened, and the corner of her mouth lifted into a slight smile. 

Well, that little admission made me immediately cry, "Who _are_ you?" I mean, I'd already suspected all of that, but none of that was really Imelda. She was a purist, or she used to be.

Picking at some imaginary lint on her sleeves, Imelda calmly said, “I think I’ve done quite well in coming out of my shell,” and I completely deflated.

“Yeah . . . yeah, you have.” Her eyes quickly turned up to look at me, so she could see if I was being genuine, and I sighed in resignation. “Maybe not of coming out of the house, but I can’t deny that living here has been good for you on a personal level. Your mood swings are a lot less volatile. You’re not alone anymore, and the way it was before, you only ever saw someone else if they wanted something from you. You live with people now who don’t want a thing. It allows you to give for the sake of it without feeling the need to put a price on it.” Looking around the kitchen, I added, “When I came to the door, you were expecting Elena . . . Don’t give her a hard time for being a part of slaying an Original tonight or spending time with vampires or whatever it was that you were upset about in your self-defined role as guardian around here. She’s gonna be angry with you when she gets back, because I’m guessing you’ve had a lot of heart to hearts, and she’s going to feel betrayed, but if you handle it the right way by giving her time, she’ll get over it.”

“Do you?”

“What?”

“Feel betrayed?”

Her question had been sincere, but I scoffed at it. “No. I don’t trust you, so you’ve done pretty much exactly what I’d expect you to do . . . but Elena’s different. She never wanted to like you, because you were an interloper on her life, but I haven’t heard her say she wants you to go in a while now. Seems like it’s more ‘Imelda says this and Imelda says that,’ than anything. She has high expectations for everyone around her, because she believes in them, so when they let her down, she holds onto it longer than I would. You’ve annoyed the shit out of me, Imelda, but I’ve mostly seen it as a game of imaginary chess we’ve been playing against one another, not that you’ve been sitting right beside me, telling me the moves I should make, and ensuring that I lose the way you've been doing with her . . . If you know what I mean.” Her shoulders dropped as she relaxed, and I added, “Bet you have a pretty good idea of where those stakes are seeing as how you’re one with nature and all. Wouldn’t mind pointing me in the right direction, so I don’t have to go searching, would you?”

“You’ll keep yours?”

“Yep. When it was new, I thought it might be my favorite, but since it’s sunk in that I have to be careful in how and when I use it, I think it’s my second favorite stake.” 

She rolled her eyes. “One you have no intention of using.”

“Never say never, and who knows? Maybe it’ll find its way into the right person’s hands someday.”

She studied me. “It’s already in the right hands . . . That’s what I thought when I was making it, and it’s what I think now. You’ll do the right thing with it, whether it’s what I think you should do or not.” Was this some kind of a reverse psychology move? While I was contemplating that, she pulled something out of her over-sized hoodie and put it on the table in front of me. “I confiscated this from Jeremy earlier. Elena has hers, so you’ll have to ask for hers and the final one yourself.”

“Yeah, I figured he’d have one. That’s why I’m here.”

Inhaling deeply as she sat back, Imelda chanced a look at the doorway and said, “Well, I don’t think him having one was the plan, but he can be charming when he wants to be. Talked his way into one.” With some sadness, she added, “I think it took a lot out of him. You know how it is - the amount of effort it takes to force yourself to be social. He’s pretty quiet most of the time - hardly ever leaves Jeremy’s room. I never met him before he walked through that front door, but I I knew about him, and I did know his father. His father was a . . . well, he was a great hunter, but he was also cruel and blunt . . . never showed any kind emotions. The truth is, he scared me . . . a lot. When he was around was just about the only time I ever regretted living on my own.”

“And yet you called him to come deal with me.”

Her attention immediately flipped back to me. “This town! Not you specifically.”

“Mm hm.”

“Wow, there is no winning with you, is there?” Pulling on the cuff of her sleeve, so she could focus on it and hide her discomfort, Imelda added, “The point is that he should’ve never been a father. Once upon a time, your father knew how to be a dad better than he was when I met him. Alec didn’t even have that much, and his Mom died not long after he was born . . . The world’s been stacked against him his whole life, but that’s not what’s wrong with him now.” Alec? Not Alex. Weird. I watched her as she snapped out of whatever she was thinking and said, “He’s profoundly lost.”

Yeah, I guess that’s what happens when you pay the ultimate price for your job. Anyone who didn't do it intentionally would question it if they ever got the chance to come back. Plus, he was still trying to find who he used to be, and maybe who he used to be didn’t feel right anymore. Maybe nothing did. Maybe he was looking for a purpose. Staying here all the time certainly wasn’t giving him that. 

I’d drifted off into my own thoughts, and Imelda asked, “What happened to him?”

“Not sure I know what you mean.”

“You know exactly what I mean, Eve. I’d know, but someone gave him something to block me, and he always keeps it on him.”

I smiled, too tired to hide it. “That I did. Guess you’ll have to find out the old fashioned way. It’s called talking to him. Shouldn’t be too hard. You’re here all the time. He’s here all the time. And if I’m not mistaken, your clothes are only two-sizes too big, which means you’re making an effort . . . You actually put some time in on your hair . . . He’s certainly caught your eye. Maybe – “

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well, he has, and I don’t see why – “

“Stop it! It isn’t funny.” 

She was really hurt, and I hadn’t meant to do that at all. “What? Because of your scars? He’s a hunter. Bet he has a few of his own, and even if you can’t see his, then you’ve certainly painted a dismal picture of the internal ones he has to have. You have that in common. They’re not the same as yours but just as deep . . . Both hate vampires . . . Within a couple years of age.” Bobbing my head back and forth as I weighed it up, I nodded at my conclusion. “It makes sense.” 

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, maybe he’s a little tall for you, but – “

“Tall?! You must be joking.”

I really wasn’t. “Nope.”

“Eve, he is – “ She sighed while trying to find the right word and then just looked down saying, “and I’m not.”

“Oh please . . . With your hair covering half your face the way you’ve got it, you look stunning.”

Reaching up to touch her hair, she asked, “You really think so?”

“I really do . . . And if your hair was pulled back, you’d look like the badass you are. There’s a beauty in that too.”

She considered it and then waved it off as she slumped in her chair. “You’re only saying that because you think if I’m busy chasing him, I’ll leave you alone.”

“Imelda, if I wanted you to leave me alone, all I’d have to do is walk out of the house, because I know you wouldn’t follow me.”

“No, I meant – “

“I know what you meant, but I think you’re mostly done doing what you came here to do. The main thing keeping you here now is the main reason I wanted you to stay. You want to protect them . . . still not quite sure that if push came to shove, you wouldn’t kill Elena if there was no other way, but – “

“I’d never do that!”

“You say that, but I can’t believe someone with your ideation wouldn’t have had it cross your mind, and if it’s crossed your mind, then it’s easier for you to do, particularly when you've killed before and see it as for the greater good.”

Pouting, she responded, “Maybe at the start, but that was then, and this is now. I’d never hurt either one of those kids.”

“I guess we’ll see.”

Sitting forward as she pointed at me, Imelda sharply said, “No! You say that when you’re sure you’re right and are done with the debate, but you’re not right . . . not about this.“ 

That was all fine and good, but I wasn’t going to let go of my suspicions only to have her prove me right. She needed to know that I may not live here, but I was watching her. “Fine.”

Crossing her arms over her chest, she muttered, “You don’t mean that . . . I wouldn’t hurt them.”

Pushing my hands down on the table to help me stand, I retorted, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You’re just trying to annoy me now.”

“Is it working?”

“Yes . . . You have the completely wrong idea about me.”

“Oh yeah?” She looked up at me, and I said, “Prove it,” before picking up the glass of water she’d given me. “Drink this.”

She rolled her eye, but when I didn’t budge, she huffed out a breath as she looked at the water. Snatching it out of my hand, she got it all the way to her lips before she finally gave up. Getting to her feet, she stormed to the sink and poured it down the drain. “It’s not poison.”

“Nah, of course not.”

Slamming around in the cupboards, she exclaimed, “It actually would help you!” and I lumbered towards the doorway.

“Probably knock me out for a couple of weeks, long enough to let Esther swoop in and save the day.”

Instead of denying that’s what she’d been planning, Imelda turned and then worriedly asked, “Where are you going?”

“To get that other stake.”

“Well, you can’t go up there like that. It’s too much. Let me go get him and make you something – “

“Save it. I’ll be fine. I just need some R&R.”

“You need a lot more than that.”

“Whatever.”

I made it to the bottom step and heard her quietly say, “I’m sorry, Eve,” from her place back by the cabinets in the kitchen.

My shoulders slumped. I’m sure she was, and I hadn’t come here for that either. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not upset. It’s like I said, I expect it . . . You’re you . . . Don’t apologize for that.”


	73. Finding Some Respite

After reusing the napkin I’d gotten downstairs to make sure I was presentable, I stuffed it in my pocket and went to knock on the door. Nothing. Well, that was annoying. “If you’re in there, and I’m going to go to all the effort of lifting my hand to knock, then you should at least answer.” 

It only took a couple of seconds after that for the door to fly open, but instead of looking confident, he seemed incredibly awkward. His hand went to the top of his head, like he wasn’t sure why he’d opened the door, and after he ruffled his hair, making his bedhead worse instead of better, he dropped his hand and waved it in the direction of the room, while taking a step back to let me enter. “Eve.” 

Looking around as he closed the door behind me, this place didn’t look any messier than it had the last time I’d seen it. He may not leave this room much, but he was at least tidying up after himself. I noted the computer screen and the game that’d been paused. There was a headset beside it. Well, he hadn’t been using that, or he wouldn’t have heard me complaining, but I would’ve heard it if he’d been playing using just the speakers, so he hadn’t been playing at all. 

Jeremy must’ve been playing before he left, but wouldn’t the screen have gone dark? Why was it now lit up? Was it to create the illusion that he’d been playing? My eyes narrowed as I turned to look at him. “What are you up to _Alec_ , because this whole recluse act you’ve got going on now? I don’t buy it.” Tilting my head in the direction of the window, I added, “How many times have you gone out using that in the last week? There’s at least once that I know about, but I’m guessing you just came back from somewhere again.”

His entire body relaxed, like he was tired of the mask he’d been forcing himself to wear and relieved he could finally lift it, but he still wasn’t the overly confident man I’d met in that hotel room . . . maybe more like the one I’d met after I’d sent Jeremy out of the room, just quieter as he went to sit on the bed. “It’s been a week and a half, Eve, where’d you go?”

Leaning back against the desk, so I didn’t have to face the prospect of getting back up again, I felt a little bad that I had essentially ditched him. I didn’t trust him. I definitely thought there was something wrong with him that was beyond his control, and yet I firmly believed that he also needed help. “I had some things to do.”

Looking off to the side, he laughed sadly. “Yeah, well whatever it was, you look like hell.”

“Don’t feel great, if I’m being honest.” That immediately got his attention. I’d always thought it was a ‘me’ thing to not admit how bad my injuries were, but maybe it was a hunter thing in general, and me saying that said how bad it really was to him. To not draw attention to it, I added, “I don’t think my exit was appreciated much by anyone.” My eyes narrowed. “Something tells me you know that though . . . I mean the front door was wide open, wasn’t it?” 

“I, uh – “ He exhaled an awkward laugh. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do.” My eyebrow ticked up before I tiredly looked away from him. Confronting someone caught in a lie wasn’t as easy as it seemed. “You weren’t invited to their little hunting party, but you certainly knew it was happening, because Imelda had to stop Jeremy from being involved, and if he knew, you knew. You went to keep an eye on things, followed my sister afterwards, and got there for all the excitement . . . Didn’t get back here much after I did, did you?” I glanced at him, and his eyes flicked to the window. “It's not a problem. You can keep using it without worrying you’ve been heard. I didn’t hear a thing . . . You staged your appearance and this room to make it look like you’d been here for a while, which you would only do if you hadn’t been.”

Relaxing again, he sat back against the wall. “Not with it enough to notice me following you, but with it enough to put all that together, huh?”

He wasn’t wrong. Wait, did he see me crying? “It’s creepy to follow people.”

“Just making sure you got where you were going safe.”

I actually believed that. What I didn’t understand was why he made it difficult to get there. “Why do you lie all the time?” I think the sincerity of my question caught him off guard, because he didn’t have an immediate response. “Why not just admit what your name is from the start?”

“Well, obviously, I wasn’t going to tell you my real name when we first met - standard hunter protocol on meeting people. You should know that.”

“Depends on how long I’m planning on sticking around. You knew you were going to be around for a while, and I meant after that when you knew that Imelda knows what your real name is.”

He casually lifted a shoulder. “Figured I’d just let it play out . . . You got there in the end, and Alex is pretty close . . . really close, like weirdly close . . . I didn’t mind.”

I remembered the look on his face the first time I said it though. “You’re sure it’s not because you couldn’t remember your name until after I said Alex?” He hesitated, and I sighed. “Another lie?! Seriously?!”

“How often can we show weakness and live to tell about it?”

“What, you still think I’m going to kill you?”

He begrudgingly said, “No,” before sighing. “What am I supposed to do? Let you know I’m worse than you already think I am?” 

“There’s worse and then there’s worse . . . one is memory loss, which you can’t control. That I can understand. The other is deception which makes you seem worse in a very different kind of way.”

He nodded before ducking his head. “All I had to go on when I came back were my fake IDs. The names on them didn’t feel right.” 

Alec looked at me, and I didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe if he had anyone in his life who wasn’t dead, then coming back would’ve been easier on him if all it took to remind him of something vital, like his name, was to say something close to what his name had been. “I was just going through A-names after you said Austin . . . Is that where you’re from? The accent says Texas . . . I think.”

The corner of his mouth lifted into a slight smile. “Yeah it does.” His smile fell somewhat. “But I couldn’t tell you where in the state. It was on one of my IDs, so maybe . . . It’s like the more important something is, the more I try to reach it, and the more I have to pay to get it back, but that . . . my name . . . That was the first time I remembered something without a nose bleed.” Bowing his head again, he quickly added, “And then I figured you’d get there eventually, so that wasn’t a lie.”

“Well, have you tried music?” He gave me a blank look, and I tried to explain. “We associate songs with certain moments in our lives, so maybe if you heard the right song, you’d remember something else . . . the same goes for smells or the taste of certain foods . . . sensory stimulation to trigger memories?” Looking at his clothes I added, “Or colors? Like is that even something you would wear?”

Pulling at the bottom of the shirt he was wearing, so he could look at it, he shook his head. “It was in my bag, so it’s mine, but it doesn’t feel . . . “ Looking back up at me he said, “I don’t have any emotional attachment to it . . . I don’t remember buying it, so it could be my Dad’s for all I know.”

“My Dad wore suits. Maybe not when he was younger, but definitely when he hit his 30s, he was all suits all the time. Even on a hunt. The most he’d dress down for one was by removing the jacket and tie and rolling up his sleeves.” 

“Yeah, well, from what I can remember, my Dad dressed like a lumber jack most of the time, so this probably is his.” He looked back down at the green flannel in annoyance, and I smiled.

“I don’t know. It fits you, so unless you and you’re Dad were the same size, I’d say it was probably yours, and the way you’re wearing it is more grunge than lumberjack . . . maybe clothes just didn’t mean much to you, and you wore them out of necessity or practicality, so you don’t have any emotional attachment to them. If you want, we could always go shopping to get you new clothes.”

He shook his head. “I don’t have the money to – “

“I'll buy.”

He didn’t like that at all. “I’m not your responsibility.”

Well, he kind of was, but that was beside the point. “So what’s the alternative? You go out and get a five finger discount or steal the money from somewhere else?”

“I don’t need your charity.”

“Oh please.” I looked around the room before saying, “It’s not like you aren’t staying here free of charge, so you can’t tell me that you’re not okay with a certain amount of charity, or have you convinced yourself that you’re conning all of us into having you stay here, and that makes it different somehow?”

He started getting off the bed and muttering, “Find, I’ll just go,” and I took a step forward to stop him, because that’s not what I’d meant at all, but my leg started to give out. I caught myself on the desk just in time, but he’d noticed, and now he looked conflicted on whether he should keep going or come check on me. He took a step in my direction, and I put my hand out for him to stop. I didn’t need his help. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You really don’t look very good. I could take you to the hospital.” Sensible, but my mind went to that quack that was at the hospital here. Liz said she’d been handing out vampire blood to patients, and even though Liz had also said that she’d agreed to stop, I didn’t think she would until she learned a harsh lesson in why she should, so I didn’t want her or any other doctors she might be in cahoots with anywhere near me. I needed to survive this without vampire blood, because I had no idea what the next day or two were going to bring with Klaus.

What had we been talking about? “Anyway, nobody’s telling you to leave . . . You should stay here. You should let me take you shopping too. All my money’s from ill-gotten gains that my Mom managed to pilfer away for me after she turned and from my Dad, who was probably just as dodgy in his ability to score cash . . . I don’t like spending money, because I never had any growing up, but giving it to a worthwhile cause? I’m all for that. And I do owe you. I didn’t feel bad when you died . . . I think I might’ve made a joke out of it, and if I’d had the time, I would’ve found out where he put you and stolen your weapons too.” 

I don’t know what he was thinking, but he definitely wasn’t saying anything, so I just kept on going. “And I still don’t feel bad that you died. I feel bad that you came back and that this is what you came back to when you did . . . Keep trying to remember who you were, but maybe it’s okay to let go of some things that aren’t that important, so you can build a new life for yourself, and you can start by buying things that you can remember buying . . . clothes, weapons, you name it, and I’ll make sure you have it, okay?”

I’m not sure if he meant it or did it because I was a pretty pathetic figure in that moment, but he relaxed before nodding. With a growing smirk, he asked, “So what kind of joke was it?”

Putting my weight back against the desk, I sighed. “Think I might’ve said I’d wanted to see how I matched up against another hunter, but if Stefan could take him, then he must not have been that good.”

Alec snorted before sitting back down on the edge of the bed. His body language said he was ready to move the second I collapsed, but I wasn’t going to do that . . . not here anyway. “Don’t tell me I got killed by anything less than a level 3 vampire.”

“A what?”

“Nothin’. It’s just something my Dad used to do. It’s like a threat level ranking. Might have to change level five’s to Originals.”

“Oh . . . I’d put Stefan at a 3.5, maybe 4 for reputation alone? He was the Ripper of Monterey.” 

Alec immediately sat up taller. “You’re joking.” I shook my head. “I thought he was long dead.”

“Nope. Just gave up human blood until Klaus made him start drinking it again.” I gave him a faint smile before looking down. “I beat him at his worst though . . . fair and square, no tricks.”

“What do you mean no tricks?” 

For some reason I found it difficult to explain. “I’ve beaten him quite a few times . . . dart gun here, headshot with a wooden bullet there, but hand to hand? I’ve beaten him twice that way. I consider that no tricks.”

“You didn’t beat him if he’s still alive.”

I threw him a look. “He did die. It was just temporary.”

“You know what I meant, and if you had killed him, then - ”

He stopped himself, and I slumped. If I had killed Stefan, then he wouldn’t have killed Alec. “Yeah . . . Probably a bad time to tell you that I need your white oak stake, huh?”

“You can tell me anything you want, but I’d feel better if you did it sitting down.”

I wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve and stared at it. The bleeding was slowing down, but not stopping. I didn’t have a punctured lung. I’d feel it if I’d bit my tongue. Where the hell was it coming from? Some kind of an internal injury, not lower abdomen. There was no tenderness there. Chest cavity? I was taking shallow breaths, but I’d thought that was because I’d done something to my ribs. Might be a touch worse than that. I guess if you really thought about it, I’d hit that wall with about the same amount of force as if I’d been hit by a car. Now I wondered how bad that crack in the wall actually was. Good thing it was an old house or the damage would’ve been a lot worse. As it was, I think that Alice should take up masonry and fix it herself. “I am sitting down.” I looked up to see Alec standing in front of me, and he looked concerned. 

“Do you want me to call Imelda?”

Why would I want that? “She just tried to poison me. I think not.”

“Hospital?”

“There’s a doctor there that was giving vampire blood to people to heal them, and even if she told the sheriff she stopped, I don’t want to chance it. I’ll be fine.”

“Not sure you will.” 

He took a step closer, and I put my hand out to stop him again. “I’ll get out of your hair if you just give me that stake.”

“Why do you want it?”

“Because I took on Klaus tonight, and I guess you can say I beat him too.”

“I take it that means he isn’t dead either.” I nodded, and he sighed. “Eve, you’ve got to stop collecting these things, like they’re family. You can’t tame them any better than you could tame a lion.”

“Well, I’m a tiger, so I’m not all that different than a lion . . . Rawr.” 

I smiled as he huffed in frustration. “You’re getting loopy.”

Maybe I was. “The stake? I need it to make amends.” 

Looking behind him, he asked, “If I let you have it, will you at least let me have a look at you?”

I could live with that price. I nodded, and he turned to dig his bag out from under the bed. I looked at the stake as he brought it back and then looked back up to him. “What do I look like? That’s not white oak.”

His jaw clenched as he debated with himself. Finally, he went to the dresser next to us and pulled it back from the wall. Crouching down, he used a pocket knife to pry up a floorboard and lifted a stake out of the hole before standing and turning to hand it over to me. “You didn’t take it with you tonight?” 

He replaced the floorboard. “I wasn’t hunting Original vampires tonight.”

With it finally in my possession, I put it in the front pouch of my hoodie next to the one I’d gotten from Imelda and left my hand on it, so I knew where it was. I didn’t want to chance losing it. He’d said I could have it. He hadn’t said I could keep it. “Then what were you doing?”

Shoving the dresser back into place, he haphazardly answered, “Making sure Jeremy didn’t get involved.”

“Then how did you end up at my house?” 

"Pretty close to the way you said it." Alec tossed me a look that said he wasn’t going to answer any more questions as he turned towards me, and then immediately shifted into yet another persona as he completely took charge of the situation. “You’re in shock. I need you to lay down, so we can elevate your feet.” It was clear he wanted me to do it now, as he headed for the bed, but I hesitated. He stopped to look back at me in expectation, and I glanced at the bed in almost horror before shaking my head. 

“Didn’t think you could get much paler. What’s wrong?”

Looking up at him, I mumbled, “It’s my back . . . I can’t lay down.”

“Lay on your side.”

I still hesitated, and he barked out, “You can’t keep standing, so unless you want me to hang you upside down to keep the blood flowing to your heart, you’re gonna have to suck it up and do it.”

I threw him a look. “Well, when you put it like that . . . how am I supposed to get back up?”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he waved me over to him saying, “Let me have a look.”

“And turn an obvious weakness on someone I don’t trust?”

He wasn’t having any of it. “You made a deal. Are you really gonna make me take that stake off of you?” My hand wrapped around it tighter, and I shook my head. “Then stop eyeing me, like you’re weighing up whether you could take me right now and get over here.” I took a shaky step forward, and he was off the bed a moment later. I put my free hand up to ward him off, and this time he ignored it as he wrapped an arm around my waist to help me the rest of the way. “You don’t think make things easy, do you?”

Studying the bed, while I tried to figure out the best way to do this, I muttered, “Personality defect,” before just deciding to do it. The second my ass hit the mattress, I regretted it, but it was too late now. Sitting next to me, Alec reached down for his bag, and I watched him with an eagle eye as he rooted around in there only to pull out a stethoscope. My eyes immediately shifted back over to him. “That’s what you used to listen in on Jeremy and I?”

His response was a smirk before he put it in his ears. “It’s good as a listening device . . . for safe cracking . . . and this.” Knowing I didn’t want to turn away from him, or maybe that I couldn’t even if I wanted to do it, he reached behind me, put the metal part against my lower back, and slowly slid it up as he listened for something. He got to about mid back before I flinched and then he eased up on the pressure, but continued concentrating on what he heard. I didn’t know what it was, but he didn’t look very happy about it.

“What is it?”

He quickly shushed me, and a minute later, he pulled the ends out of his ears saying, “How’d it happen? I didn’t see.” 

“I, um . . . Alice shoved me into a wall.” 

Nodding, like that made sense, he reached down into his bag to grab some more supplies. “That’s why she was down when I got there?”

“Yeah.” I watched him to make sure he didn’t pull out anything dangerous. The syringes and iodine didn’t do much to alleviate my concerns. “What are you going to do with those?”

Looking at me, like it was obvious, he responded, “There’s fluid in there. I need to drain it.”

I don’t think so. “You expect me to let you stab me in the chest with a needle?”

“If you don’t, your lung will collapse, and then I will be taking you to the hospital whether you want to go or not.”

“But won’t it collapse if you poke a hole in the lining?”

“Not if I do it right.”

I stopped him again by saying, “And can you? Don’t get me wrong, but you only remembered your name a week and a half ago.”

To my surprise, he took the time to explain it to me, so he could put my mind at ease. “I didn’t have to remember what a bird was or a tree. I didn’t have to relearn how to walk. It was who I am and everything about my life that was gone . . . not the basics or the skills I learned along the way.”

“And your reflexes?”

“They were slower, but I knew how I should react. My body just needed time to do it.”

“And now?”

He gave me a nonchalant look before his eyes darted to the window. “They’re better.” 

Yeah, he had been silent when he came back into the house, but I still stopped him again. “You can really do this?”

Without hesitation, he answered, “I may not remember how I know what to do, but I still know what to do. I can do this.” What was the alternative? If my chest was filling with blood, he was right about the collapsed lung, and I wouldn’t know how bad it was until I saw how much blood was in there. It may not be that bad. 

With a final sigh, I nodded. “Then I’m gonna need you to lie on your side.” 

“Which one?”

“Whichever side hurts worse. It’s bilateral. That means – “

I snapped, “I know what it means,” and felt a little bad for stealing his thunder on being able to tell me something he knew, so when he got up to make space for my legs, I said, “But why don’t you tell me anyway.”

“Now why would I do that? Guilt seems to make you wanna buy me things. Might get a new car out of you yet.” He smirked, and I threw him a frown before looking over my shoulder in the direction I wanted to go. “I didn’t even know you were there at first. Didn’t see you until you took down that last vampire . . . You did that after all this happened?” I glanced up at him, and he already knew the answer to that. I nodded anyway, and a slow grin overtook his face before he said, “Not bad.”

Turning to face the wall proved to be difficult, but nowhere near as hard as lying down was. “He shoved Elena and laughed about it. I would’ve killed him, but there was a high probability that Sage would’ve gotten away, and if she did, I wanted to know where she was going.”

“Sage, the redhead?”

“Uh huh.” I winced and sucked in a sharp breath as I hit a particularly difficult angle. Rather than watch me work through it, he quickly pulled my left arm out from under me, and I hit the mattress with a jolt. Leaning over me, he asked, “Better?” and my right hand left the stake in my pocket, curled into a ball, and reached up to punch him in the side of the head, but he grabbed my wrist and laughed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you need to work on how you show gratitude.” My response was a scowl, and his grin fell. “It is better though, right? Relieves some of the pressure?”

Some . . . on my left side at least. I gave him a noncommittal motion with my hand, and he nodded before putting my hand back in my pocket. “Here, you’ll wanna keep holding onto that stake, and don’t move.” I checked just to make sure there were still two stakes in there, and he disappeared from view. I heard the rustling of packaging and felt him reach for the bottom of my shirt, and then he stopped. “Do you mind?” 

“Of course I mind. I’m in a house full of enemies and am entrusting one not to kill me . . . but do what you’ve gotta do.” 

I felt air touch my back, and there was a definite hesitation when he got a good look at it, but I didn’t ask what it was he saw. A moment later, I felt the wetness of the swab, and he held the shirt in place with one hand as he positioned the syringe with the other. When he made his move, he also said, “You really think I’m an enemy,” as a distraction. I certainly felt it, but I didn’t make a sound. I was expecting to hear something, like the air being let out of a tire, but there was none of that. I did feel a slight pop. A second later, he was off the bed to get something else. When he came back, he did the other side, and kept telling me to take deep breaths. When he was done, put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re doing really well.”

I tried to look back at him, and he turned my head back around. “Is there a lot?”

“More than a healthy person would have. I’m not sure what’s causing it. We might have to do it again, and if it’s bad, you might need surgery to stop it.”

“Can you do that too?”

Grinning, he said, “No, I will have to take you to the hospital for that . . . You know you didn’t answer my question.”

Did I really think he was an enemy? “Safer to think you are until you prove otherwise.”

“And this proves nothing to you?”

Even though it may have really been his father, he had been sold to me as someone who would try to kill me. “Not really.”

He didn’t say anything at first. “And Alice? The others?”

I already knew what he wanted to say. That they were the enemy, I shouldn’t be living with them, and blah, blah, blah. “Can we not talk about this right now?” 

“Yeah . . . sure. You know you shouldn’t be living with them, but where else have you got to go? It’s the closest thing you’ve got to a home now, and nothing I say is gonna change that, right?” 

“Pretty much.” 

He patted me on the shoulder in understanding before letting go. I saw him briefly when he put a pillow under my feet, and then he disappeared again. There was the sound of a chair moving, and as he snapped something behind me, he said, “So, what do you want to talk about?”

“Don’t feel much like talking.” 

“All right.” 

A second later, I was flinching away from what I can only assume was a cold pack as he held it to my back. “Wouldn’t mind listening.”

“What, you want a bedtime story?”

In annoyance, I grumbled, “No,” and he laughed.

“Then what?”

“What’d you see when you died?”

There was an short silence followed by, “Why? You thinkin’ of dyin’ on me?”

Hadn’t even crossed my mind that I might. “I’m not worried about dying.”

There was a longer silence that time. “Your ring?”

“Jeremy has a big mouth.”

“Yeah, you’re tellin’ me.”

Nice try, but if he thought that’d side-track me, he was wrong. “That’s why you can’t remember you, isn’t it? Whatever you saw replaced your memories.”

“I’m not sure – “

“Yeah, you do know what I mean . . . it was a necromancer’s relic that brought you back, and necromancers bring back the dead to know the future . . . What’d you see?”

“Thought you didn’t feel like talking.”

“I don’t, so you should do it for me.”

There was another pause and then he said, “Ever think that once the dead say what they saw, they just go back to being dead?”

“No . . . Do they?”

It sounded like he was smiling when he said, “Nah, or at least, I don’t think so. Maybe if a necromancer is bringing something back from the dead, but if they die themselves? Nah. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“You’re a necromancer?”

“No . . . The die belonged to one though. They say he used it on himself . . . He’d just die and come back and die and come back and he lost his mind along the way.”

“Are you afraid you’re losing your mind?”

“It’s gone. Rebuilding it hasn’t been easy, but I’m getting there.”

“Do you think it’s because you were dead so long? Like maybe if someone had touched it sooner, you wouldn’t have seen as much?”

“Maybe. I couldn’t go through this again though . . . not for any length of time.”

“Is the future really that bad? Is that why you don’t want to talk about it?”

“It’s nothing you need to worry about.”

I thought about letting it go. He’d said he didn’t want to talk about it, but how often do you get a chance to talk to someone about the future? “Was it like Planet of the Apes?”

Sounding amused, all he said was, “No.”

“Jurassic Park?”

“You’re going the wrong way.”

“Could go that way again. Giant Astroid?”

With a short laugh, he answered, “That’s not really how it works.”

“So not global catastrophe?”

“No. It’s more focused than that . . . takes a certain avenue and goes with that.” 

“But the future can change if all those dead witches thought I was going to kill Alice in Savannah for years . . . pretty much from the day I was born as far as I can tell . . . I didn’t. I changed it.”

“Or something changed you.” 

“Mmm . . . Could be.” Keeping a firm grasp on my stakes, I closed my eyes. “Want to talk about your Dad?”

“Rather talk about the future.”

“You don’t make things easy either.”

“Personality defect or hazard of the job?”

Good question. “I don’t know . . . Were you kept a secret too?”

There was a long enough wait before he said, “Guess I was for a different reason . . . went to school though. Not sure why. Must’ve been important to my Dad that I was educated in some way, or he wouldn’t have allowed it, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have done it himself. Never stayed in one place long enough to know anyone, not that I could’ve told ‘em anything about my life if I did.”

“Probably why you’re such a good liar.” 

He laughed. “I’m tellin’ you my sob story, and that’s what you take away from it?”

I nodded tiredly. “It’s why you’re better at wearing lots of different masks with different people.”

“Better than who, you?”

With a short sigh, I answered, “Yeah, I just make people mad . . . My filter is defective, and unless I know I’m never going to meet someone again, I’m not very good at lying.” 

“Might be that it runs in the genes. Elena’s not very good at it either.”

“She has her tells, but she’s vastly better at it than most people . . . I don’t immediately see through them.”

“Could be that’s because she’s the one person you want not to lie to you.” I didn’t say anything. I’m not even sure if I took a breath until he said, “Must be hard . . . being raised alone, knowing she’s out there, and she doesn’t know you even exist. It’d be like half of you was missing, the important part, the part you’re supposed to die to protect, but at least it can’t reject you if you’re dead, right?” I remained silent, and he let it sink in just a little bit longer. Finally, he said, “But what do I know? I was an only child.”

“She told you I wouldn’t tell her why I didn’t want to meet her, didn’t she?”

“Might’ve heard it mentioned . . . And it was a shit thing to do to you, by the way. All of it from start to finish. It was just plain wrong.”

Had Jeremy, Imelda, or Elena told him about me? At this point it didn’t matter, because he still knew about it. The future may not be entirely written, but there was absolutely nothing you could do about the past. “Was a good plan.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a reason why vampire hunters shouldn’t have kids.” 

“My Mom wasn’t one.”

“No, but she did let your Dad call the shots. From what I can tell about your family, that’s because he knew a hell of a lot more than she did about all of this, but he was really learning as he went, brought you along for the ride, and then your Mom went and got herself turned into the very thing your Dad was raising you to hunt.”

“Well, I think both their stories are really quite heroic.”

“To you . . . And what about your story, Eve?” 

There was a rather long silence as I pieced together how I should respond to that one. “It’s a work in progress.”

“Might want to keep in mind that just because it started like a tragedy, doesn’t mean it has to end in one . . . You know, I met your vampire.”

Oh here we go. “I know you met Damon.”

“He is your vampire, though, right?” I didn’t answer, and it sounded, like he was poking fun at me as he said, “That’s gonna end well.”

My eye lids popped open, and I snapped, “What would you know about it?”

“More than you’d think.”

I immediately found myself being interested in that. “Ooh really?” I was in the process of trying to look back at him, but his hand stopped me.

“Whoa, this ain’t no sleepover.” Readjusting the ice pack as he pulled blanket back up over my shoulders, he added, “Didn’t end well.”

“How so?”

“She’s dead.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

Sounding bitter, he said, “And say what? That we met and for the first time in my life, I told someone my secret. She didn’t run when she should have . . . She played bait, it’s my fault she got turned, and my Dad finished her off before I could even explain to her what’d happened . . . you can’t be a hunter and have a life.”

What was I supposed say to that. I mostly felt angry on not only his behalf, but hers as well. She hadn’t had a chance to prove what kind of a vampire she would be. He’d obviously held onto her body, knowing she would come back, and then his Dad killed her when she did. Bet he even did it on purpose. Imelda said he scared her. Alec said he wouldn’t have let Alec go to school if he didn’t see some benefit to it . . . He sounded like the type who had to have absolute control over his son. He wouldn’t have let Alec go on a hunt by himself with some girl, and Alec wouldn’t have suggested this girl be bait if he loved her, especially if she had no idea what she was up against. He’d probably just planned on her sitting on the side lines and seeing what a vampire was for the first time. It was his Dad’s idea to use her as bait. Bet his Dad even said that to him after . . . you can’t be a hunter and have a life.

“Or maybe having a life is the only way to keep a hunter from becoming a monster themselves . . . It wasn’t your fault.”

“You weren’t there.”

“Doesn’t matter . . . I may not know the specifics of how it happened, but I do know it wasn’t your fault. It was set up to be a failure from the start. Wasn’t your idea for her to be a part of the hunt, was it? Wasn’t her idea either. She probably just wanted to see a vampire, and you wanted to show her one, but somehow it turned into a hunt, one where she was playing bait.” 

Moving the ice pack, he took a slow breath. “I should’ve never even told her.”

“And I’m sure that was drilled into you afterwards, so it became the lesson you learned from it, but it was always the lesson you were supposed to learn from it . . . Look, I’m not gonna change your mind tonight, and you’re not gonna change mine, so we should leave it.”

“Yeah we should.”

Oh, he sounded angry. I went to get up, but it wasn’t hard for him to stop me. “You gonna stab me in the back now?”

“No . . . Just sit tight.” My back was numb, so I couldn’t even feel the stethoscope this time, but he must’ve used it, because he said, “I think the bleeding’s stopped. You’re gonna have to take it easy for a while though.”

Like that was going to happen in this town. It was another minute before I finally said, “How’d you remember all that? It seems really important . . . lots of blood involved?”

Knowing I was still talking about his dead love, he sighed. “Yeah . . . yeah, there was, but I had something that helped me focus.” 

I went to look back at him, but he got up to hover over me. As he pulled the pendant he was wearing around his neck out from under his shirt, I asked, “Do you mind?” and he shook his head, so I reached up to touch it. It was a silver moon with a star next to it. I took note of the tiny drops of blood that were interwoven with the chain. Could be from vampires, but their blood tended to go black after a while. It didn’t turn brown the way this had. I guess he wasn’t lying about the nose bleeds . . . or he was a serial killer. It was pretty and yet not overly feminine. “This was hers?” He nodded again, and I said, “Can you remember her name?” 

He cleared his throat awkwardly before saying, “Katie,” and I smiled. “What?”

“Nothing. Just sounds so normal . . . I was expecting Ursela or something.” 

He breathed out a laugh and then he must’ve heard something, because he quickly stood just as the bedroom door swung open. “What’s she doing here?” 

It was Jeremy. He seemed angry about something. Bet he wasn’t happy that Imelda had confiscated his stake or that there had apparently been a mission to keep him out of what happened tonight. That, or maybe I bled on his bed. I went to get up again and felt a hand swiftly push me back down. “She’s hurt. I was just lookin’ after it.”

Why’d it feel so tense in here? There was a brief pause, and then Jeremy diffused it by pointing his thumb over his shoulder. “Elena’s downstairs. She’s looking for her . . . again.”

“Ugh, I don’t want to see her right now.” I really didn’t.

“Jeremy, did I hear - ” Elena came to the door and then looked down the hall behind her. “Stefan, she’s up here!”

“Goddamnit.” Now he was in the doorway, and I was even more annoyed by that. “Figures you’d be allowed in past Imelda . . . traitor.” He sighed as he approached the bed. I’m not sure what I was expecting – maybe more of a stand-off on letting him anywhere near me, but Alec backed down and corralled Jeremy out of the way. 

Crouching down next to me, Stefan readjusted my shirt and wrapped me up a little tighter in the blanket. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“I don’t.” I’d said everything I had to say, and I really didn’t want an apology right now.

“I could leave you here if you want.” 

No, I didn’t want to be here for very much longer. I’d gotten the stakes, but if I stayed, I’d lose them, and I didn’t particularly feel like showing off that I was a mere mortal to Elena. I mean, she’d heard the stories of how I’d been hurt in the past, but she was going to get in my way every time I tried to do something going forward if she knew how bad this injury had actually been over something that’d been a mere misunderstanding. I shook my head, and he picked me up without giving me much of a choice on the matter. I looked down at the ground and then up at him in annoyance. “I can walk, you know. Walked myself over here, didn’t I?”

I heard Alec say, “Don’t let her walk . . . Don’t give her any of your blood either. She doesn’t want it. What she needs is bed rest and lots of fluids. Keep her warm until her color comes back, and keep an eye out for infection.”

Stefan looked at me to see if I really didn’t want blood, and I nodded, so he said, “I’ll talk to him.” 

Well, if he was going to bat with Damon over it, it certainly took the stress away from me. “If you do, and it works, I’ll consider us even.”

He smiled briefly. “Come on, let’s get you home.” 

I rested my head on his shoulder with a nod. “Thanks, Alec.”

I heard Jeremy mutter, “Can’t believe you’re letting her go with them,” and that got all of Elena’s attention. It sounded like they were going to argue. As we left the room, it also sounded like Alec was stuck in the middle.

Imelda stopped us at the front door, and I tensed, but all she did was hold something out to me. “Take this twice a day . . . It’ll help.”

I shot her a look. “I don’t want it.”

“It’s not what I gave you earlier.”

“Still don’t want it.”

Bypassing me, she looked at Stefan and said, “See that she takes it.” He reluctantly took the pouch, and then we were outside, and there was Damon waiting out on the sidewalk. He did not look happy. Flipping my hand in his direction, I muttered, “Take care of that too, would ya? Make him not quite so angry,” and Stefan snorted. 

“You’re going to milk this for everything it’s worth, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but only on the really important things . . . personal interactions and the like.”


	74. Psycho Killer

I felt a presence enter to the room and began removing my headphones as I opened my eyes. 

“ _I can’t seem to face up to the facts_  
_I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax_ "

I hadn’t felt like being shut up in my room, so I was on a couch in the living room, which meant I had to be more alert, but I don’t think there’s much I could’ve done with the person who came around the corner of the couch. 

" _I can’t sleep ‘cause my bed’s on fire_  
_Don’t touch me I’m a real live wire_ ”

I’d sort of given up on him showing up here. I muttered, “How fortuitous,” as the song by the Talking Heads got to its chorus. 

" _Psycho Killer_ "

I don’t think he appreciated that. It showed a certain lack of respect given everything that’d happened, so by the time, the next line, " _Qu’est-ce que c’est_ " started, I found myself pinned against the nearest wall. The " _Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-far better_ " didn’t cover the sounds of the shriek I tried to muffle as my back hit the wall, and he paused " _Run run run run run away_." In annoyance, he ripped away the wireless headphones that were still dangling in my hand and tossed them across the room. A man used to inflicting pain on people knew it in all its iterations, and that had most definitely been a yowl of agony. 

It wouldn’t have been if I was in tip top shape, because while he may be angry and had been fast, he knew exactly how much power to use to keep from actually hurting me, and he’d gone with a firm hand, not a forceful one, so a second later, he was angry for an entirely different reason. Inhaling sharply through his nose, his eyes narrowed, and he loosened his hold on my upper arms enough that my feet were able to touch the floor. “You’re hurt.”

Well, I hadn’t screeched because I was afraid of him, that’s for sure. If there was any doubt, the venomous look I gave him through glassy eyes said it as I gritted out, “I’m fine.” To test it, he pushed my back against the wall with more force, and I held up pretty well until I didn’t and inadvertently flinched. As soon as I did, he immediately let me go. 

“Show me.”

Was he fucking kidding me? This was half a step away from something my Mom would’ve done after an off-the-books solo-hunt done on her watch. “No!”

Leaning closer and saying it slower, like I hadn’t understood him the first time, he demanded it again. “Show. Me.”

My whole face fell. At this point, my Mom would most definitely force me to turn around using her superior strength and look herself. He wouldn’t do that, would he? I didn’t know. I was getting awfully strong ‘Mom’ vibes from him right now. My eyes flicked over his shoulder in the direction of the doorway where Alice was now standing and to save myself the further embarrassment of being manhandled in front of her, I exhaled a short frustrated breath before using him as a blockade for her eyes as I turned and slowly lifted that bottom of my shirt. 

I couldn’t lift it very high given the restraints imposed by my muscles, but I guess it didn’t matter, because he took over and lifted it high enough to confirm what he suspected before rapidly pulling it back down. He lightly touched over my shirt where the blackest bruises were, and I shrugged away from him before I felt the hair on the back of my head starting to be disturbed as he gingerly went to touch the lump back there, which caused me to flinch before ducking down and turning to face him, so all my damage went back to facing the wall. “Stop it!”

“Who did this?” 

What, no, ‘what have you done,’ or ‘get out of my sight,’ and that second one was definitely one I had to do if she said it, because it’d meant her emotions were short-circuiting her brain, and she didn’t want to hurt me worse. I watched him warily. “Who says anyone did it?”

“Well, you didn’t get this way by falling down the stairs. Tell me – “

I glared as I cut him off. “Or what? You’ll torture me? Sort of defeats the purpose of trying to find someone who hurt me if what you do to find them makes it 10 times worse.”

His jaw clenched as he took half a step back. “Maybe I’ll start by ripping out the hearts of the most obvious culprits. How many vampires are you living with now?”

I turned to get away from him. “This is ridiculous.” His hand flashed to the wall and halted my retreat.

“I got your message.” I’d had the local flower shop send him a single black rose with a card saying, 'Condolences on your brother Finn'. I wasn’t even sure if he knew his brother had died. I wasn’t sure of much outside my own little world, and it’d gotten dramatically smaller in the last day. I looked at him over my shoulder, and he said, “Cute . . . Is it true?” I lifted a shoulder, and he leaned closer. “Was it you?” 

I could be a smart ass, as I was prone to being at times, but not on this one. I looked him in the eye when I answered. “No.” My candor served me well. He took me at my word and noticeably relaxed. 

“Bonnie didn’t break that spell out of the goodness of her heart, did she?” I gave a hesitant shake of my head, and he asked, “How’d you do it?”

“How’d I do what?”

“How’d you get her to change her mind?”

“I told her if she didn’t, I’d hunt her mother down and send her pieces of her every year on her birthday. Guess she believed me. I meant it, so it wasn't hard to sell.” 

A wry smirk slowly spread across his face, but whatever he was thinking, he didn’t say it. “And the spell? I know you needed to know whose blood was whose for it to work.”

“Left to right in order of importance to you . . . Elijah, Rebekah, Kol, and Finn.” I looked at him a little more fully and asked, “Are you done testing me now?”

“Feel like sitting down, do we?” 

Was he mocking me? “Stop asking me questions.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I’m entitled, don’t you?” 

I guess he was. Bowing my head, I gave a little nod. “What do you want to know?”

“Do you have a white oak stake?”

“Funny you should ask . . . While you were busy trying to find me, you took your eye off the others. The mayor had Damon look after the restoration of the sign for the Wickery Bridge, and he pawned it off on some guy in town, but he got it back, so I actually have 11 white oak stakes.”

“Well, were you planning on giving them to me?”

“I would if you gave me some space.” One of my eyebrows arched in challenge, and he actually did take a step back. As I reached for the first two stakes in my over-sized sweatshirt, I muttered, “You know, when you know there’s white oak out there from the tree that gave you immortal life and can take it away from you, you really should be more careful.” I handed him the first two stakes and reached for two more that I had shoved up both my sleeves before handing those to him and then digging through the pockets in my black cargo pants. When I’d gotten them all, and he was holding them, I looked up at him with a sarcastic smile that said, ‘I could’ve killed you many times over just now.’ As his look darkened, I shrugged, “What? You think I’d just leave them lying around anywhere for anyone to pick up?” My eyes darted to the fireplace, and I added, “Now that you have them, feel free to leave as much white oak ash as you want in the event that you’re ever a pain in my ass again.”

He gave me a look that agreed strongly with what he said out loud. “You’re exasperating.”

“So I’ve been told.”

His eyes narrowed as he took a step closer and said, “By who exactly?” Uh. “Wouldn’t happen to be that woefully ignorant and impulsive vampire you came to collect at mine, would it?”

“What does he have to do with anything?”

“Good question. What _does_ Damon Salvatore have to do with anything?” Walking in front of me, like he was going in for the kill, Klaus, said, “He is the one who came to get you in Chicago, is he not?” He took my silence as an answer and added, “But you weren’t simply returning the favour. You went to an awful lot of trouble to get him back on a hunch.”

Well, it would appear that he’d gone to an awful lot of torture based on a hunch he’d had about Damon being important to me. “You say hunch. I say sure thing.”

“Right, because you know me oh so well.”

“Nope . . . no, I don’t know you at all, just a fan of good theatrics . . . There are certain qualities that all murderers have though.” 

He paused, and then his eyes narrowed. “You’re far more wily than I gave you credit for being, Little Wolf Killer.”

Well, if what he meant by that was that I was playing him just a little, then he was right, but I could understand why he wasn’t quite able to put his finger on how. It’d been subtle and yet obvious at the same time. What was obvious was that I didn’t really think what I’d just said, but the words had been enough to diffuse the ticking time bomb in front of me. If I’d said I did know him, he’d do something erratic to prove me wrong, something like rip my heart out since I was wearing my ring or kill Alice. By saying that I didn’t know him, I’d wedged something in his circuitry that would prevent him from doing either of those things. I was in a safe green-zone with him, or I was until something else flipped that circuit closed, and he reacted badly. 

My lips pursed together as my forehead lifted, and I innocently asked, “Am I?” He studied me, and I mean really studied me, which I didn’t like at all, so it was with a dangerous glint in my eye that I leaned forward and asked, “So, how’s that whole figuring me out going for you?” l might as well have winked and said, ‘Remember when you felt the fear of dying? That was all me.’ What was I doing? I think I was messing with him, like genuinely playing with him in a weird tug of war between antagonistic friends . . . Fuck, did I actually think we were friends? No, that couldn’t be right. I didn’t trust him one iota.

I immediately leaned back in uncertainty, and his head tilted as he observed me. To get past how awkward I felt, I reached into my pocket saying, “That reminds me . . . I have something else for you to take too.”

I presented him with a syringe and rather than take it from my open palm, he asked, “What is it?”

“You’re looking at something that can deal with your mother. I call it anti-witch serum. Use it in a dart, keep it in the syringe, or put it in her tea, and it’ll drain her of any powers she might have – for a while anyway.”

His mouth opened, like he was going to say something before he leaned back and shut it. Then he gave me a new look. I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, but it was akin to me surprising him yet again, and him not really trusting it, so with a shrug, I added, “It’s courtesy of Kol’s journal with a few minor tweaks to make it stronger and easier to deliver.”

Finally picking it up and lifting it to get a better look, he asked, “You’re sure it works?”

My eyes flicked in the direction of Alice before I nodded. No need to really get into the details in front of her. “Well, if it didn’t, I wouldn’t be here right now. I was wearing something that blocked my ring when I used it . . . and it’s fast acting. It’s the last of it that I have from the first batch I made. I can always make more if something happens to it, but it might take a while to find all the ingredients again, and I know that batch definitely works. I just figured you might be in a better position to use it than I am.”

Grasping it in his hand, he looked down at me with a smirk, “Not that you’ve given it all to me. There’s more of it somewhere. This is just the last of it that you’re willing to part with as of right now.”

“Well, I’m not going to leave myself open to attack, am I? The rest is in some darts . . . in case I get there first.”

With a final nod, he stuffed it into his pocket, and then said, “Which reminds me . . . onto the matter of your own stockpile of white oak stakes.”

“Wouldn’t I have used one if I had any?”

“Or that’s what you want me to think.” His eyes narrowed. “Or maybe it isn’t a stake? Some bullets perhaps?” 

Holding my arms out as far as they’d let me, I said, “You’re free to search me if you like.”

“Because you don’t have it on you . . . That doesn’t mean have any at all . . . And then there’s the matter of my daggers.”

My shoulders dropped, and he smiled. It’d been a natural reaction, one I couldn’t control, but maybe that little indiscretion had helped me sell not having any white oak, because I hadn't had a similar reaction to the thought of losing that. It's just that the daggers were probably more useful to me, because you could use them on an Original without killing an entire line of vampires. “They’re important to me.”

“I can assure you that they are of far greater importance to me.” I gave him a petulant scowl, and he grinned wider. “But if you give them to me before I’m forced to take them, then perhaps we could talk about maybe allowing you to keep two.”

He didn’t need the ones for his father and Finn anymore, I suppose. I still chanced my luck. “Plus, the one my Dad had?”

“Including the one that’s been in your family.”

Elijah wasn’t going to be very happy about it, but I wasn’t going to get in a war with Klaus over them. With a slight sigh, I muttered, “All right, fine,” and he smiled again. 

After a brief moment, he said, “You know, I couldn’t help but notice that it wasn’t me you shot.”

“I wouldn’t read too much into it. I wanted to see if I could beat you, and I did . . . twice now, actually. I’m moving onto bigger and badder things.”

“Part of that’s probably true, but it isn’t the whole truth, is it, Eve? Were you looking for some leniency?”

Somewhat confused, I muttered, “Leniency? What are you some kind of king now?” and he smirked, because in his own mind, he was onto something.

“I was the easier target.”

“Rebekah was stationary.”

“Before I moved, I was closer, and you were going to shoot me, but didn’t.”

“I didn’t really think it through, but she’s more fun when she hates me.”

“She really isn’t.” Turning to the side and glancing at me, Klaus said, “So, it wasn’t tactical. Is it because you need a benefactor?”

“A benefactor in what?”

“No, I suppose your Mother left you more money than you could possibly spend in 10 lifetimes. I could open up doors for you with your music. On the other hand, you don’t play for others. You do it for yourself. Maybe you need protection. “

“I can protect myself just fine.”

Casting a sideways look at my broken body, he muttered, ”Clearly not . . . but I believe you think you can.” Crossing his arms over his chest and bringing his hand to his chin in a thoughtful pose, Klaus said, “Haven’t even come close to trying to seduce me.”

My face scrunched up in disgust. “What the actual hell are you talking about?” 

His finger covered his mouth briefly as he did a poor job of trying hide his devilish grin. “Although, if I recall correctly, you did think I was a stripper the first time we met.”

“I did not!” I so did say that, and we both knew it.

“Well, then explain it to me?”

“Explain what?” 

“Explain to me why it is that you aren’t just getting yourself into all kinds of trouble to protect him and him alone . . . You’re protecting me too. Full stop.”

“Well, it turns out that I’m not just protecting you or him. I’m protecting Caroline and Tyler too, since if you die, your entire line will.” That hit him a little more than I was expecting. He silently asked me if that’s what’d happened to Finn’s line. I solemnly gave him a single nod, and I saw it. In that moment, he didn’t think of himself. He didn’t think about how he could use that knowledge to keep other vampires or friends of vampires from killing him. He felt the weight of it and for the briefest of moments accepted the responsibility for all those lives that would be lost if he died . . . and then it was gone, probably never to return again. 

“That’s why.” He focused on me, and I said, “I think there’s a part of you that’s redeemable . . . Maybe you don’t deserve redemption, but there’s something there . . . I saw it with those hybrids in the woods. What you did to turn them was bad. It was bad science, which is beneath you, and it was an incredible waste of life, but when your experiment went wrong, you took responsibility for all of it . . . and just now? You felt the weight of that same kind of responsibility again. Sure, you’ll find a way to use your line’s lives to your advantage, but that wasn’t your immediate reaction to hearing it, and that thing that made you have that reaction, the one that said you weren’t going to let that happen, not for you, but because it’s the right thing to do for all the others? That small part of you is real, and it’s worth protecting . . . maybe you even know that, which is why it’s buried under a mountain of everything that’s wrong with you, so you can protect it and keep it from being something you consider a weakness.” Shrugging a shoulder, I added, “Plus, you’re lonely and sad, have terrible parents, and I like beating up on you even if I don’t particularly like being around you for long periods of time. It’s entirely too stressful, since you’re prone to doing just as erratic but more devastating things than Damon, and you’re mean to the point of cruelty.”

My words had a way of striking to the heart of issues for him at times, so he hadn’t liked hearing most of that, and yet it looked like something he’d needed to hear, but the last part confused him. “I’ve never been cruel to you.”

“Well, you did kill my Mom.”

“I haven’t been cruel to you, specifically.”

“Then there’s the time you sicced Stefan on me.”

“I was giving you a fight you wanted to have! If you’d walked away that night without any bloodshed, then you and I both know you wouldn’t have been satisfied . . . I’d go so far as to say that you still weren’t satisfied, and that’s why you turned on poor Bonnie.” Parts of that might be true . . . about needing some kind of release from the stress I was feeling around then . . . but that was the difference between he and Damon. Damon didn’t mind my dark side. There was a substantial part of it that he even liked quite a lot, because he found it amusing or attractive or fun depending on what I did with it, but he didn’t feed it, and that might mean that I kept vampires like Alice around and would never achieve true brilliance as a hunter, the way I might if I allowed Klaus to dictate what I did with my dark side, but it was better for me if I kept it in check. I mean look what happened the night we were talking about right now. At its worst, it helped me walk right into dying. 

“Sure, put a pretty bow on it now that it’s in the past, but that’s not why you did it then. You’d never seen me in action. You had no way of knowing how I’d react or if I’d live. You wanted to find someone else to punish me, so you wouldn’t have to do it.”

“And look at how remarkable you turned out to be.” 

I broke eye contact and looked away from him. Yeah, I suppose there’d been a healthy amount of curiosity involved in it too. I suspect that’s why he’d brought me along for the ride in the first place even though I hadn’t really known it then. “More potential cannon fodder for you to use at some point in the future, much like your hybrids.”

“I would never use you, especially not in that way.”

“Yeah, well, there must’ve been quite a few people you’ve found intriguing down through the years, and I can’t help but notice how many of them are around now, but you’re right. I’m not really of the opinion that you’ve been cruel or even mean to me, specifically. The point is that you could be.” 

“I let you get by with more than I would just about anyone else.” 

“And why is that, exactly?”

He came up short and then quietly said, “Well, perhaps it’s because I think this world is better with you in it.” 

I ducked my head, and took a slow breath. “It’s really not . . . I’m not saying that I’m looking to leave it anytime soon, but either the world wasn’t made for me, or I wasn’t made for it. We don’t seem to get along.” He suddenly found his hand very interesting. Before I knew what he was doing, he’d used his fangs to bite into it, and I really had to comment on it. “I really wish you wouldn’t do that.”

Holding his fist out to me, he replied, “Take it. It’ll heal you.”

Looking at his clenched fist as the blood dripped onto the floor, I shook my head. “I know how it works.” Peering back up at him, I added, “It’s unsettling when you do it.”

“If you keep talking, it’s going to close up, and then I’m going to have to do it again.”

“I don’t want it.”

“How are you going to train with me if you’re too broken to do it?”

He still wanted to train with me? There was a gleam in his eye the moment he saw that I was interested, and I wrapped my arms around me before looking away. Keeping that dark side of mine in check didn’t mean I couldn’t indulge it from time to time either. I just couldn’t let it become who I am all the time. “I don’t want a quid pro quo.”

“Suit yourself, but I’m afraid it’s a one-time offer, so if you’re not there tomorrow, it won’t be happening at all.”

Try as I might, the corner of my mouth turned up into a slight smirk. “Well played.” Looking at his hand, I added, “But I don’t want your blood.”

As he unclenched his fist and shook it off, he asked, “Too personal?” Well, I certainly wasn’t going to drink it from him directly, and even he’d put into a glass . . . yeah, it seemed a little personal. I lifted a shoulder, and he rolled his eyes before giving me a look that said he knew I’d had a few injuries that’d healed way faster than they should have. I’d obviously found someone I didn’t think it was too personal to go to for that. “Well, I can see there’s one vampire I really must pay a visit. He and I need to have a little chat. No need to point me in the right direction. I’m sure he’s at the nearest bar.”

As far as I knew, Damon had gone out looking for Jeremy, so he could find out if there were any other dead vampires out there who could confirm what my Mom had said, but by now he very well could be at a bar. I watched Klaus closely though, and I think my Mom been wrong. I didn’t think he was actually going to do anything to Damon . . . other than maybe have that chat and make something that wasn’t his business his business. Well, I wasn’t going to chance it today, but it was something to keep in mind. “I think you’ve got me confused with Katherine. I only like spilling blood, not drinking it.”

He gave me a sincere smile for not confirming or denying, while still issuing something of a threat. Taking a step back, he said, “Do better to make sure you’re not spilling quite so much of your own in the future and be at mine tomorrow with those daggers as soon as you get out of school. You wouldn’t want me to question what use the vampires in your life are to me if they aren’t going to do a better job of looking after you.”

School? I guess it’d leave me enough time to get the vampire blood out of my system before we trained. I muttered, “Always with the threats,” as he continued backing away, and I thought we were almost in the clear when he turned with another smirk, but when he got to Alice, he took a good look at her and almost hissed her name as he circled around behind her. Whatever he leaned in to say to her over her shoulder, made her posture stiffen, but I couldn’t hear it, and then he was gone. 

As soon as the door closed, I took as deep of a breath as my chest would allow before shuffling over to the couch. Alice did something similar, but even after she found her breath, she didn’t move from her spot, and I wondered why, but I really needed to sit down before I did anything else. After getting situated on the couch and laying back against the arm, I glanced over the back of it towards the doorway, and she was still there. “Did he compel you?”

She quickly shook her head. Well, then what the hell was wrong with her? Bending my knees to make room, I pointed to the vacant seat near my feet and said, “Then you might as well come over here and sit . . . I think we need to talk.”


	75. Finding What's Been Lost

Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a bottle and popped the cap before shaking about 4 capsules into my hand. When she came around the end of the couch, Alice asked, “What are those?”

Reaching for a glass of water, I answered, “What do you think?”

“You’re not really going to go over there tomorrow, are you?” I flicked a glance in her direction before tossing the pills back and drinking them down. “You don’t have to do what he says. Nobody around here is afraid of him.”

“Is that really what I just saw?” Klaus had clearly spooked her regardless of what she was saying now. 

My eyes opened a little wider as if to ask what the hell he’d said, and she puffed out a soft sigh. “He said if I ever lay a finger on you again, it won’t matter how far I run, he’ll find me and – “

I would’ve thought she’d keep going, but she didn’t, so I tried to prompt her. “You’ll suffer?”

“Something like that.” 

Well, it looked like she didn’t want to talk about it anymore, but it did make me curious how much he knew about her if he knew just the right thing to say to upset her this much. Had he always known where she was for the last couple hundred years, or had he only had someone look into her after he found out she showed up here at the boarding house? I leaned against the pillows behind my back and carried on with our conversation about the blood capsules. “I’m not taking them to protect anyone.”

“Then you want to go.”

“Yes and no. I’m intrigued, but knowing my luck, it’ll probably wind up being a game of chess, so he can train me on strategy. He wouldn’t actually train me on anything physical himself. He knows that if he did, there’s a high probability that he’d lose it and really do some damage, but there is always the possibility he might hire a human in to train me while he stands on the side lines and yells at me for not concentrating enough.” Putting the bottle back into my pocket, I added, “I didn’t know what his reaction would be, so I couldn’t take anything for my injuries until I was sure he wouldn’t kill me. I’m sure now.”

She quietly said, “That’s smart,” and I dipped my head towards the end of the couch to indicate she should take a seat in the space where my feet should be. With a reluctant sigh, she did, but still looked incredibly uncomfortable as she sat on the edge of the couch, like she was ready to run at the first opportunity. “But why aren’t you afraid that I’ll kill you?”

“Well, I’ve had time to think about it, and I just don’t think you’re a killer.” 

Her head turned, so she could see me better. “I’m the reason you’re hurt right now.”

“Yeah, but after everything I’ve done, this is the worst thing you’ve done to me, and I’m still standing. I thought you did it because you thought I somehow morphed into an Original vampire, hurt you, and took away your chance at revenge against Kol . . . Apparently it was because you thought I somehow morphed into an Original vampire, hurt you, took Damon to find out where you guys were keeping your white oak, and then I brought him back bloody.” 

“You talked to Stefan.”

Taking another sip of water, I muttered, “More like he talked to me . . . incessantly, and I couldn’t get away from him or make him shut up.” Sliding the glass onto the table by my head, I added, “Caroline isn’t a killer either . . . I mean, she killed one person before she knew she was a vampire, but since then, she hasn’t. Don’t get me wrong. She can defend herself when she needs to do it, but it’s not in her disposition to kill, and if she did, she’d be haunted by it even if it was in self-defense.”

“You think I’m like her?”

“Yes and no.”

She bashfully ducked her head and said, “I’m nowhere near as smart as her. She’s so well put together. She already has everything figured out, and she’s so young.”

Yeah, Caroline did have it all planned out ahead of her. “I’d say that once upon a time, you had it all figured out too, because you did find a way to get along okay for 700 years, but that’s not what I meant. When I first saw you, you reminded me of her, and blonde hair and positivity are sort of her trademarks, so on the surface, you’re similar, but I don’t think that’s the only reason I associated you with her. My instincts were calling the shots, because I was in the middle of a hunt, and they can see a lot more a lot faster than I’m conscious of in the moment. I think they said you weren’t a killer.”

“And you didn’t like the way he treated me.” Yeah, that’s definitely the other part of the reason why I hadn’t killed her. I casually shrugged a shoulder, and she said, “He wasn’t always like that.” I gave her a look that said, _‘I’m sure he wasn’t, but he certainly was when I saw him, and it was more than just him having a bad day,’_ and she sighed. “Did he say anything before . . . “ _Other than, ‘Ahhhhahahaha’ and ‘Yes!’ as he got his power back?_ I shook my head, and she asked, “Why couldn’t you have just left us alone?”

“If it hadn’t meant people dying, I would have. How could you stand to leave them like that for years? They were living corpses, and the smell of rot . . . the inhumanity of it all is truly mind-blowing. I’ve never seen anything so vile, and I’ve seen a lot.“ 

Alice hung her head and looked truly ashamed. Who knows if she could even get into that room to try and save them once she’d brought them there? There could’ve been a spell that prevented her from doing it, or maybe she’d really just been that brainwashed by him. With a soft sigh, I pulled my knees to my chest and sat up a little more. “Can I ask you something?” She gave me a wary look, but nodded, so I said, “Why are you here if it isn’t to get revenge on Kol?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Where else am I going to go?” 

So, she was truly directionless now without her husband telling her what to do? With some incredulousness, I suggested, “Somewhere that isn’t with the person who killed your husband?”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No . . . I’m just a little confused by you. With as long as you were with him, I haven’t seen you mourn him . . . not a tear, not a flipped switch . . . nothing, but you thought I hurt Damon and attacked me for that. You also attacked Sage to protect he and his brother from whatever she was thinking when they were trying to find the white oak from the second tree . . . Why is that?”

Her eyes widened, “Oh, I . . . It’s not that.”

Well, I hadn’t meant to imply that she was into Damon. Her husband just died, and whether he was a jerk or not, she wasn’t going to move on that quickly. “No, I didn’t think it was. Why would you protect him? I know you’re not up to doing the deed of killing yourself, but you’re clearly not opposed to getting your hands dirty to help someone else kill . . . so why haven’t you done something like that to get rid of Damon?” 

“Why would I?”

To get back at me for taking her husband? A quick smile touched my lips and I said, “You may not be a genius, but you’re not an idiot either . . . You know why, just like everyone else seems to know.”

Sitting back a little, she pondered her next words and then finally said, “Your sister clearly doesn’t,” and I exhaled a short laugh.

“No, she doesn’t.”

“Or she does, and she’s being willfully blind about it.”

“Maybe.” My eyes narrowed ever so slightly before I said, “Was he actually your husband?”

“Yes.” 

“Did he put a spell on you to keep you with him, so he could use your abilities to protect the house, or did your love die out a long time ago, and you didn’t think you’d be able to make it on your own, so you stuck around?” 

Seeing that I wasn’t going to drop it, she sighed before leaning back against the other arm of the couch. “It wasn’t a long courtship, but I knew he was the one . . . until he wasn’t.” Her eyes flitted over to me, but I didn’t have anything to say, and she sadly looked back down at her hands. “I loved him as much as he’d let me love him. I would’ve died for him. If he was standing here right now, I’d still die for him, but . . . I can’t also say that I don’t feel any relief that he’s gone . . . and I miss him, but I feel like maybe what’s making me sadder than anything is that I don’t miss him enough and that what I really grieve is the loss of what we should’ve had and never really did, but the worst part is that somewhere along the way I lost myself, and now I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know how to live on my own. I don’t have any ambitions. I could cook or clean around here, but the boys are tidy, and you’re the only human. To be honest, you intimidate the heck out of me, so I couldn’t even begin to know how to ask what you want for dinner.”

“Oh . . . uh,” if the revulsion wasn’t on my face, it certainly was in my voice as I said, “I can assure you that the last thing I’d ever want is a vampire servant. Thanks, but no thanks.” She slumped a little and refused to make eye contact. I couldn’t help but wonder if my rejection of her offer made her situation worse. If her husband had been abusive, and it was becoming clearer to me that he had, then she’d lived with it for at least 3 lifetimes. I’m not sure she’d ever be able to recover her true identity, but I wasn’t about to let that keep me from trying to help her find herself now. “What about clothes?”

“I can darn them if they’re torn, or – “

“No, I mean for you.” Looking at her top, I said, “I’m fairly certain that’s Caroline’s . . . is it you?”

“I like it. It’s pretty.”

“Okay, but what about something that’s yours and yours alone? All your stuff was left in Savannah.”

Looking up to the ceiling dreamily as she flattened her palms on her knees, she smiled, “I haven’t been shopping in ages.” 

“And the last time you got something that you wanted and weren’t told to get by someone else?” 

She looked at me in thought and finally gave up. “Even longer.”

Reaching behind me to find my phone, I said, “Okay then,” before ringing Elena’s house. Jeremy answered, and I told him I needed to talk to Alec. 

Nudging my foot, Alice asked, “Isn’t that the hunter?” I nodded, and she whispered, “What are you doing?”

“Killing two birds with one stone.” Her easy going posture tensed slightly, and I quickly amended what I’d said, “Uh, metaphorically speaking. He doesn’t really remember who he is either, and I promised him clothes . . . I should be better by the time I’m out of the shower, so we all might as well go into town together.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to do something normal for a change that doesn’t include blood and guts and violence or strategy, and Caroline’s busy today with something that’s important to her, so if the most normal thing I get is an almost 1000 year old vampire and a back from the dead hunter to go shopping with me, then I’m going to take it.” As far as I knew, Tyler would be back in town tomorrow, and Caroline was spending today finding just the right things to wear when he did get home, or I really would’ve rather done this with her. On other hand, she would’ve been too bossy for either of them. They needed to pick their own things, and she would’ve just picked what she thought they should wear.

“But he wants to kill me. It’s what hunters do.”

“Yeah, well, he’s gonna have to get over that. I said that I’d buy him some clothes, not that they came for free.”


End file.
